Final blog

I will not be making any further posts to this blog.

May I take this opportunity to warmly thank the visitors (clocking up 10,000 visits from 100+ countries) and contributors (from Institute visitors to students to directors at the SFI) for supporting the blog!

Institute Director Jean-Pierre Danthine to join Swiss National Bank

The Managing Director of the Swiss Finance Institute, Jean-Pierre Danthine, will join the Swiss National Bank's Governing Board in 2010.

The announcement of professor Danthine's appointment was made on April 8th and was widely reported in the press.

For those keen to see researchers represented in Government, the appointment is good news and I wish Jean-Pierre the very best in the role.

Rajna Gibson considered for future Swiss National Bank Board

Following the announcement of Jean-Pierre Roth's retirement at the end of the year, Swiss Finance Institute's Rajna Gibson has been named as a possible candidate for the Executive Board of the Swiss National Bank.

Professor Gibson, pictured here in discussion with Banque Cantonale Vaudoise Board Chairman Olivier Steimer, is director of research at the SFI.

Watch this space for developments.

Wegelin Managing Partner Otto Bruderer highlights trust at Executive Program graduation ceremony

The 70 graduates of the 2008 Executive Program assembled this afternoon to receive their diplomas, and to learn who had won this year's award for the best diploma thesis.

Dr Bruderer gave an erudite presentation on the importance of trust in banking based on his personal experiences before launching into a sure-footed description of interdisciplinary research, conducted by leading economist Ernst Fehr, on the neurobiological basis of trusting behaviour.

The Executive Program Alumni Prize went to Credit Suisse computer science expert René Keller for his research "Web 2.0 in Private Banking: The impact of Internet services on the client advisory process".

A graduate of the ETH computer science department, René has held various IT management positions and currently heads CS's IT Core Banking Solutions division. Last year, the Alumni prize went to Dr Haibo Wunderli-Ye for her research on wealth management in China.

Novel method to reveal true performance of US mutual funds

A highlight of this year's Annual Meeting was a presentation by Olivier Scaillet (pictured at the Meeting) on the application of false discovery rate (FDR) statistics to the estimation of mutual fund performance.

Scaillet uses FDR to reveal when good fund performance can be attributed to chance alone, and is therefore likely to deteriorate in the long term.

The Geneva-based faculty member of the SFI become interested in the application of FDR statistics to finance after attending a presentation by Berkeley statistician John Rice at a statistics conference in Brazil.

Though Rice applies the method to the detection of stellar occultations, Scaillet recognized the application to mutual fund selection when Rice stated:
We face the problem of searching for needles in a haystack when we do not know what the needles look like. How do we automate serendipity?

At this point on a Friday afternoon I am glad to entrust Scaillet to select the correct statistical test for this particular application.

The end result is that the private banking industry will benefit from an objective and relatively simple method to select wisely among the estimated 2100 US domestic mutual funds available to today's investor.

Forward look from Institute guest Professor Tom Cooley

What is the benefit of drawing upon academic research in the teaching of executive education? "Research is inherently forward looking and it is that inherent forward looking habit of mind that singles out a manager for success".

Dean Tom Cooley made these comments during a roadshow for the NYU Stern/Institute's new Executive MBA in Banking and Financial Institutions Management (EMBA), held today at Zurich's stylish Widder Hotel.

He and other representatives from the EMBA program Harry Hurzeler and Claudia Pfenniger offered answers to some pressing questions posed by the assembled graduate-level professionals in banking and finance.

"It is hard to imagine how someone can prepare to get to the next level in Management just by studying the way business is being done," said Professor Cooley. "If you do that alone you will always be backward looking".

Executive education programs that are embedded in strong research faculties, like the Swiss Finance Institute and NYU Stern School, enrich the conventional case study approach to business education with an academic basis that can better sustain a manager's career.

I will be reporting more from Professor Cooley and our other international guests in the coming weeks. For more information about the EMBA click here.

Third Annual Meeting assembles CEO's and top finance professors to reflect on solutions to financial instability

Tomorrow is the annual highlight in the Institute's knowledge transfer calendar with a day-long meeting that will assemble our faculty, invited academics from around the world, and special guests UBS Group CEO Marcel Rohner and NYU Dean Tom Cooley.

There's more information about the event here.

I will be reporting on the research presentations at the event shortly, including Professor Michael Brennan's presentation on agency and asset pricing, Olivier Scaillet's presentation on his work on false discoveries in US mutual fund manager performance and Amit Goyal's first major public presentation for the Institute since he took up his Senior Chair in August.

The image, above, shows Visiting Professor Darrell Duffie giving the plenary presentation at the Second Annual Meeting last year.