Cambridge Business Briefing – March 2015

What: Cambridge Judge Business School Briefing
When: 4 March 2015, 6pm - 8pm
Where: UK India Business Centre, Gurgaon

The Oxford and Cambridge Society of India, in association with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the UK India Business Council, presented the Cambridge Judge Business Briefing, in Gurgaon on 4th March 2015.

Topic: What Doesn’t Kill You Will Only Make You More Risk-Loving! Early Disasters & CEO Behaviour

Speaker: Professor Raghavendra Rau, Cambridge Judge Business School

 

rau-raghavendraIn this business briefing, Professor Raghavendra Rau took the opportunity to discuss why certain CEOs are very risk-averse while others appear to tolerate risk very well. Raghu, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School, will show the relationship between a CEO’s early-life exposure to disasters and their attitude to risk-taking. Specifically, experiencing disasters without extremely negative consequences appears to desensitise CEOs to the negative consequences of risk. Conversely, where a CEO is exposed to the downside of risky situations when experiencing a disaster, he or she appears to be more cautious in their approach to risk. These results hold across various corporate policies and outcomes including leverage, stock volatility, cash holdings, acquisitiveness, and CEO compensation structure.

Professor Rau was Principal at Barclays Global Investors, then the largest asset manager in the world, in San Francisco from 2008-2009. He is Co-Editor of Financial Management, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance, the International Review of Finance and the Quarterly Journal of Finance. His research has frequently been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, among others.

The event was open to members of OCSI from either Cambridge or Oxford, and up to two professional guests of OCSI members.

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