Rene Stulz
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
13th December 2023 at 11am
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR JOHN COTTER UCD College of Business on 13th December 2023, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on RENÉ M STULZ
Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is my privilege to read the citation for the awarding of an Honorary Doctorate to Professor René Stulz from The Ohio State University.
It is a fitting tribute that UCD is awarding the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa for all René’s contributions in financial economics.René is truly a world leader in financial economics.He is a leading expert in many areas relating to Corporate Finance, including Corporate Governance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Risk Management and Valuation. We are delighted that he is here today to accept this Honorary Doctorate.
Professor Stulz is the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics and the Director of the Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics at The Ohio State University. He has spent much of his career there and is almost singe-handedly responsible for its stellar reputation in finance. René has also been at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester.René received his training in economics from the London School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned his PhD.
Professor Stulz is a real world leader, one of the most influential people in the Finance discipline, and has given much service to his profession.He has made extensive contributions to many academic journals and research associations.René is a past president of the American Finance Association and of the Western Finance Association the two leading research bodies in finance.René was the editor of the Journal of Finance, the leading academic publication in the field of finance, for over a decade, and co-editor of the Journal of Financial Economics for five years. He is on the editorial board of more than ten academic and practitioner journals.
René has published around 150 important articles in finance and economics in the leading journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies.René is ranked as one of the top economists, not surprising given the more than 100 thousand citations to his research.He has been recognized for his many achievements with a multitude of honours and awards. To call out a few, René has been appointed as a fellow of the American Finance Association, the European Corporate Governance Institute, and the Financial Management Association. Further, he has been awarded a Marvin Bower Fellowship from the Harvard Business School, a Doctorat Honoris Causa from the University of Neuchâtel, and the Risk Manager of the Year Award of the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
As you graduate today with your degree from UCD it is important to recognise the role Rene has made to the teaching profession.René is a world leading educator and teacher, especially in terms of PhD education but also in executive education. He has taught extensively both in open enrolment and customised programmes to executives in Europe, Asia and North America in areas of his expertise including risk management, banking, and corporate valuation. Professor Stulz’s expertise is very relevant to the industries you graduates are going into.He has consulted for major financial institutions as well as for non-financial firms, the New York Stock Exchange, the IMF, and the World Bank, and been on the boards of many banks.
René has been a good friend of UCD, Ireland and Europe for a long time and has many connections and contributed much.He is from Switzerland, his son lives in Paris, and tellingly for us, his wife’s family hail from Ireland. To illustrate, René has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Science Foundation Ireland funded Financial Mathematics and Computation (FMC) Cluster, and having UCD as the lead institution.As part of our Scientific Advisory Board we have benefitted much from his wisdom and expertise in growing a research ecosystem as he did as Chairman of theScientific Council of the Swiss Finance Institute. Throughout René has been very supportive of the activities of UCD and especially Banking and Finance at the College of Business.He has visited both with the Scientific Advisory Board, and also on his own initiative.At all times he has provided astute career and research advise to our faculty which have given rise to many opportunities for self-improvement.We are particularly grateful for his sponsorship of our students visiting the Ohio State University.
For his considerable contribution to the discipline of financial economics I am privileged to present René Stulz for the award of an honorary degree.