MIT Sloan to hold "Finance Beyond Crisis" conference

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2008 financial crisis was a catalyst for change and advancement in the finance field. To discuss the lasting impact of the financial crisis and the future of finance, the MIT Sloan School of Management will host an MIT Sloan Idea Exchange alumni conference on April 25, 2019 in New York City. The event, "Finance Beyond Crisis," will feature MIT Sloan faculty, alumni and other thought leaders in finance.

The keynote speaker at the conference will be MIT Sloan Visiting Prof. of Finance Chester Spatt, who is also a distinguished senior fellow at the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy and the Pamela R. and Kenneth B. Dunn Professor of Finance at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon. His talk will focus on current open policy issues in equity market structure and the role of exchanges, including issues that have developed or increased over the past decade since the financial crisis. The structure and potential distortion created by the prevailing systems of fees and rebates on different orders will be discussed along with the impact of volume discounts for rebates. 

The conference will also feature a fireside chat with MIT Sloan Dean David Schmittlein and John A. Thain, former chairman and chief executive officer, CIT Group, Inc. and Merrill Lynch. Thain will speak about his experience managing a major financial institution at the height of the financial crisis and his perspective on the future of finance.

Additional sessions during the one-day conference include:

SeLFIES: A Globally-Applicable Bond Innovation to Improve Retirement Funding, Support Infrastructure Development, and Lower Government Financing Cost and Risk – MIT Sloan Prof. Robert C. Merton will discuss how increased longevity of the population and the decreased prevalence of pensions has made funding retirement a global challenge and how SeLFIES could help ease the pressure.

The Role of Housing and Mortgage Markets in the Financial Crisis – The great misnomer of the 2008 crisis is that it was not a subprime crisis, but rather a middle-class crisis. Inflated house-price expectations led households across all income groups, especially the middle class, to increase their demand for housing and mortgage leverage. MIT Sloan Prof. Antoinette Schoar will share her research on the impact of mortgage lending and the supply of mortgage credit before the crisis.

MFin Ten Years and Counting – When the finance world was tested by the crisis, MIT Sloan responded with the Master of Finance Program (MFin). Heidi Pickett, assistant dean of the Master of Finance Program, will reflect on the program since its launch and discuss its future as well as how the degree has positioned alumni for long-term success in this changing global landscape.

Technological Innovation and Creative Destruction of Human Capital – MIT Sloan Prof. Lawrence D.W. Schmidt will discuss his research examining the link between innovation and individual earnings risk. His findings suggest that innovation is associated with a substantial increase in labor income risk and can potentially explain a nontrivial fraction of recent increases in income inequality.

Fintech Beyond the Crisis – MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Gary Gensler, senior advisor to the director of the MIT Media Lab, will look at finance's long symbiotic relationship with technology and explore how the markets and public policy are adjusting to this generation's innovations and disruptions around AI, blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, mobile payments, and fintech.

Matthew Rothman, MIT Sloan senior lecturer and managing director of Goldman Sachs, will moderate the alumni panel discussion that will focus on panelists' first-hand experience during the crisis, how it impacted careers, and the forward thinking that these individuals implement in the post-crisis landscape. Alumni participants include:

• Armen Avanessians, SB '81, chief investment officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management
• Cheryl M. Duckworth, CFA, SM '94, partner and senior managing director at Wellington Management
• Joseph Naggar, MBA '96, partner and head of structured products at GoldenTree Asset Management
• C.S. Venkatakrishnan, SB '86, SM '89, PhD '91, group chief risk officer of Barclays

For more information about the conference, please visit: http://bit.ly/mitsloanfinancebeyondcrisis

The MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at mitsloan.mit.edu.

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SOURCE MIT Sloan School of Management