The Finance Research Group has two streams of interest: Corporate Finance and Global Finance.
Corporate Finance
The Corporate Finance Group was founded in January 1996. The mainstream research areas of the Group include corporate financial management (including venture capital and private equity), financial markets (including IPO markets), financial institutions (especially conventional as well as Islamic banks), financial instruments (including derivatives), flow of funds, overreaction phenomena and control of volatility in emerging markets, corporate finance aspects of privatisation, and economic consequences of corporate disclosure.
These research activities have involved collaboration within the Business School as well as joint research with colleagues within the College of Social Sciences. In addition, the Group has hosted a number of visiting researchers from all over the world; these researchers have contributed enormously to the research and publication performance of the Group.
The Group has been supported by generous research grants from the ESRC, the Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission, the Australian Research Council, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
The Group is home to many research students; indeed many PhD students are closely associated with the research activities of the Group.
During the last five years, the Group has successfully run ESRC Research Seminar Series. The Group benefits from access to the resources of a very large institution, the University of Birmingham, and contributes to sustaining the high reputation for scholarship which the University has built up since its foundation in 1900.
Future Plans
The Corporate Finance Group aims to:
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Sustain research excellence in the area of corporate finance (broadly defined) through existing research collaboration within the Business School as well as with colleagues in the rest of the College of Social Sciences.
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To attract leading scholars as visiting researchers in order to foster high quality research collaboration with members of the Group.
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To continue to attract promising research students who are closely associated with the research activities of the Group.
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To mount seminars and other forums for dissemination of research output.
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To consult with business and government to facilitate the acquisition of databases and quality research publications.
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To provide an enabling environment for members of the Group to continue publishing in leading academic journals.
The core Members of Corporate Finance are:
Global Finance
This area of focus consists of a network of academics working in the field of Global (International and Development) Finance. At its core is BRiEF (Birmingham Research into Economies and Finance) which groups economists working in the money, banking and finance area in the Department of Economics and the Department of Accounting and Finance, particularly the Finance Group, within the Birmingham Business School (BBS) of the University of Birmingham (UoB).
International collaborators include researchers at various universities in France, particularly a number of LAPE (Laboratoire d’Analyse et de Prospective Economiques) in the Department of Economics at the University of Limoges and in Germany, particularly the University of Wüppertal. The group also has links with Curtin University in Australia (the School of Economics and Finance in the Business School) and is currently developing links with the Finance Academy in Moscow.
Recent collaborations include an EC funded Asia Link project with LAPE and the University of Philippines and an EC funded Jean-Monnet project with the University of Wüppertal and the European University (Budapest). In addition, Andy Mullineux has visited the Curtin Business School (CBS) in 2008 and 2009 and the Head of the School of Economics and Finance at CBS visited in 2009 and the Head of the Economics Department at CBS will visit BBS in 2010. The BBS also received a visit from the Rector of the Finance Academy (FA) and two senior colleagues in 2009 and has been invited to visit the FA in the next academic year. The link with the Finance Academy has developed as a result of a BRIDGE (British Degrees in Russia) programme award.
Andy Mullineux manages funds that were donated by Tokai Bank to fund the Chair of Maxwell Fry in order to put on an annual Maxwell Fry Global Finance lecture in his memory. The lecture in May 2009 was given by Stijn Claessens of the IMF as part of a Maxwell Fry Development Finance Workshop organised by the GFRG in collaboration with the UK’s Money, Macro Finance Research Group (MMFRG). The Maxwell Fry Research Fund is also used to fund visiting fellowships and in 2009 Professor Jim Swafford (University of South Alabama) visited in May/June 2009. As a result of his visit Andy Mullineux is participating in a collaborative research project with Dr Jane Binner (Aston Business School) on ‘seperability testing’ and monetary aggregation and ‘optimal currency areas’ in Taiwan and South East Asia.
Andy Mullineux is Deputy Director of CHASM (Centre for Household Asset and Savings Management), a new Centre in the College of Social Sciences (UoB) being developed jointly by the Institute of Applied Social Sciences and BBS. Andy Mullineux (as co-organiser) and Professor Victor Murinde (also a member of BRiEF) are both participating in an AHRC funded project on microfinance led by Professor Tom Sorrell (Director of the Centre for Global Ethics, UoB).
Members of BRiEF supervise numerous PhD students in the field of Global Finance. There are plans to set up a European network involving PhD co-supervision (some ‘co-tutorship’ agreements with French partner already exist) and post doctoral fellowships funded by the EC’s Marie-Curie programme using MMFRG, GdRE (the French Money, Banking and Finance network), SUERF (the European Money and Finance Forum) and DGF (the German Finance Group) contacts. Andy Mullineux and/or BRiEF/GFRG is a member of each of these groups.
The overall aim is to develop an active research team in the field of Global Finance consisting of BBS academic staff and PhD students, visiting Max Fry Fellows and Marie-Curie funded postdoctoral and research fellows. Additional research funding will also be sought to cover teaching relief, PhD scholarships and additional research fellowships.
The core members of Global Finance are:
Recent publications by them can be found via the weblinks above.