24th Australasian Finance & Banking Conference

The 24th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference was held from 14-16 December, 2011 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney. A PhD forum was held on 13 December 2011 at UNSW. 

2011 prize winners

• BlackRock Research Award
  Tim A. Kroencke, Felix Schindler, and Andreas Schrimpf -"International Diversification Benefits with Foreign Exchange Investment Styles"
• BankScope Prize
  Nishant Dass, Vikram Nanda, and Qinghai Wangy "The Role of Covenants in Mitigating Conflicts of Interest Within Lending Syndicates"
• SIRCA Research Prize
  Serkan Honeine and Peter L. Swan - "What are the Determinants of Board Performance: Skin in the Game, Composition, Diversity Size?" and Chris Single and Russell Poskitt - "Why is US dollar bond funding for international banks more expensive?"
• Australian Securities Exchange Prize
  Shumi Akhtar, Maria Jahromi and Kose John -"Intensity of Volatility Linkages in Islamic and Conventional Markets"

2011 PhD forum prize winners

Prizes were awarded for the top three papers presented at the PhD forum.

• 1st prize
  Oleg Chuprinin -"Information Management in Financial Markets: Implications for Stock Momentum and Volatility"
• 2nd prize
  Francesco D’Acunto -"Ownership Structure and Firm Value: A Novel Identification"
• 3rd prize
  Matthew Gustafson -"The Effect of Public Debt Market Access on Bank Loan Spreads: Evidence of Competitive Spillover"

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Viral Acharya, New York University
  Topic: Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance 
• Mr. Ric Battellino, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia
  Topic: Recent Financial Developments
• Professor Andrew Karolyi, Cornell University
  Topic: Are assets still priced locally, not globally? 
• Professor Richard Roll, UCLA
  Topic: Volatility, Correlation, and Spread ETFs as Factors
• Professor Rene Stulz, Ohio State University
  Topic: Understanding bank performance during the crisis

Selection Committee

The Chairman of the Selection Committee is Fariborz Moshirian from UNSW.

Members of the Selection Committee included:

• Renee Adams, University of Queensland
• Allen Berger, University of South Carolina
• Michael Brennan, University of California LA
• Stijn Claessens, International Monetary Fund
• J. David Cummins, Temple University
• Asli Demirguc, Kunt World Bank
• Robert Faff, University of Queensland
• Mark Flannery, University of Florida
• Kenneth French, Dartmouth University
• Bruce Grundy, University of Melbourne
• Steven Kaplan, The University of Chicago
• Andrew Karolyi, Cornell University
• Larry H. P. Lang, Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Florencio Lopez De Silanes, EDHEC Business School
• Ike Mathur, Southern Illinois University
• Ronald Masulis, Vanderbilt University
• Maureen O'Hara, Cornell University
• Jay Ritter, University of Florida
• Richard Roll, UCLA
• Anthony Saunders, New York University
• Henri Servaes, London Business School
• Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University
• Tom Smith, Australian National University
• Bruno Solnik, HEC School of Management
• Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, UCLA
• Paul Wachtel, New York University

Journal of Banking & Finance

A special issue of the Journal of Banking and Finance on “Markets, Financial Stability and Governance” will include selected papers presented at the AFBC.