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.

New challenges for Swiss market maker

As part of our regular Alumni Lunch meetings held at the elegant Zunfthaus to Saffran, the Institute had the honour of hearing a presentation by SIX Group CEO Urs Ruegsegger (pictured).

Dr Ruegsegger spoke about recent developments at SIX Group, the organization responsible for Switzerland’s financial market infrastructure. We will hold our Annual Meeting at the HQ of the SIX Group in Zurich next year.

Swiss Finance Institute Foundation Board member Philipp Halbherr was recently elected to the Board of Directors for the SIX Group AG, and I try to keep up to date with the Group's activities.

Reason and emotions in executive pay

Institute Director Jean-Pierre Danthine is presenting his research on executive compensation at the University of Amsterdam this afternoon. The research, performed jointly with John Donaldson of Columbia Business School, examines the "pay for luck" puzzle that is so much in the news these days.

Earlier, Swiss-based French-speaking press interviewed Professor Danthine about the work.

Two sides of the coin

Two events this week saw a keen audience assemble to discuss and hear the latest facts and research from the world of finance. First came the Swiss Finance Industry Seminar by Swiss National Bank (SNB) Board Member Thomas Jordan. Professor Jordan addressed a capacity audience of more than 220 people on Tuesday morning (photo) to talk about the SNB Transaction.

And yesterday FINRISK research project leaders gave an all day presentation on the current state of their research. I'll be posting on some of those presentations in the coming days, including an excellent presentation on neurofinance by Kerstin Preuschoff. Dr Preuschoff presented some very compelling evidence that the human brain encodes important financial concepts, including expected reward, in a systematic and predictable fashion.

Economics of uncertainty

The Swiss Finance Institute found its way into several recent media discussions in the midst of this extraordinary time for the field of finance. Among others, Institute managing director Professor Jean-Pierre Danthine and Professor Martin Hoesli gave interviews and the Institute cropped up in several discussions about the Swiss financial centre.

An expert of property finance, Martin Hoesli has advised governments and pension funds on how to assess risk adjusted returns in the real estate sector and brings an empirical eye to the housing market in Switzerland and abroad. His timely new book "Real estate investment - Decision and Risk Management" has just been published by Paris-based Economica.

Jean-Pierre Danthine has given numerous interviews for print and radio in recent weeks, most recently on the Swiss approach to supporting the financial system through research and education. The goal, according to Danthine, is to strengthen Europe's research culture in the field of finance to be commensurate with its economic significance internationally.

Geneva based daily Le Temps claims that research is acutely needed as ballast in the seas of economic uncertainty. And Zurich based Finanz und Wirtschaft believes that new initiatives such as the Swiss Finance Institute cannot come soon enough in a financial system seeking an alternative to the specific forms of intervention coming from Washington and Brussels.

Professor Michael Brennan presents wake up call on stock return bias

Early risers in Zurich were treated to an impressive research presentation by Professor Michael Brennan (left) this morning entitled "The Mispricing Return Premium".

The substantial size of the positive bias in stock prices estimated by Brennan's empirical study of NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq data was all the more startling for the audience given the time-slot of the event: 7am at Zuercher Kantonalbank's gleaming offices in Zurich West.

Professor Emeritus at UCLA Anderson School and London Business School, Michael Brennan's research covers a broad topic range in finance and the Institute will see another facet of his current work when he presents on agency and asset pricing at our Annual Meeting in November.

The next seminar in the Swiss Finance Industry Seminar series, held on October 28th at 7am, will be given by Thomas Jordan, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and University of Berne. Professor Jordan's presentation is entitled Geldpolitik und Liquiditaet. Click here to register.

Also pictured: Didier Sornette (middle) and Paolo Vanini (right). Professor Vanini is director of knowledge transfer at the Swiss Finance Institute. The presentation was followed by a lively discussion from the assembled experts in banking and finance.

Financial market losses and research gains

Institute Foundation Board member Dr Philipp Halbherr addressed this year's newly minted graduates of the Master in Advanced Studies in Finance today with a positive take on the credit crisis, - at least from a research perspective!

Addressing the graduates, he explained that he did not wish to add to the sense of financial gloom, and wanted instead to encourage talented people to research financial systems. "The crisis will provide a rich body of data and experiences, giving us a new basis for risk management in the future".

Recently elected as representative of the cantonal banks on the Board of Directors for the SIX Group AG, Dr Halbherr is Head of Investment Banking, and a member of the Executive Board, at Zürcher Kantonalbank.