Notables

A paper by Yaniv Grinstein, assistant professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Vidhi Chhaochharia, a Ph.D. student in economics, has received the Best Paper in Corporate Finance Award from the Southwestern Finance Association (SFA). The paper, "Corporate Governance and Firm Value -- The Impact of the 2002 Governance Rules," discussed investor reaction to the recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley rules and exchange regulations governing financial disclosure and controls in publicly traded companies -- enacted in the wake of misconduct by Enron and other firms that led to shareholder losses. Their findings are helping regulators assess both the desirability of such rules and their effect on shareholder wealth. The award, which comes with a $1,000 prize, will be formally presented to the authors at the SFA's annual meeting this March in Dallas. The association promotes finance research among academic scholars and practitioners and is a co-sponsor of The Journal of Financial Research.

Grinstein's research and teaching interests are in corporate finance, in particular, investment, financing and governance decisions in corporations. His research has been published in The Journal of Finance and The Journal of Financial Economics. At the Johnson School, Grinstein is the recipient of the Clifford H. Whitcomb faculty fellowship in 2004-05.

Maureen O'Hara, the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Management and professor of finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, has been appointed lead director of Investment Technology Group (ITG) Inc.'s board of directors. The group is a leading provider of technology-based equity trading services. "We believe that it is good corporate governance practice to have a non-executive lead director to ensure independent oversight on behalf of shareholders," said Raymond Killian, chairman and CEO of ITG. "Maureen O'Hara's distinguished career in academia and her expertise in finance make her an ideal candidate for this position."

O'Hara has been a Johnson School faculty member since 1979. Her research focuses on issues in market microstructure. She publishes widely on a broad range of topics in finance, including banking, law and finance and experimental economics. She is the author of numerous journal articles as well as the book Market Microstructure Theory (Blackwell, 1995). She served as president of both the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association. She has been a director of ITG since 2003 and is a member of the audit and compensation committees on the firm's board of directors.