The ICMA Centre welcomes new academics

Prof. Michael Clements

Michael Clements obtained a BSc in economics from Bristol, an MSc from York, and a DPhil in econometrics from Oxford. Before joining the ICMA Centre, he worked as a research officer at Oxford, and progressed from research fellow to professor at Warwick. His research interests are primarily in time-series econometrics. In particular, on the theory of forecasting and forecast evaluation criteria, non-linear models and business-cycle asymmetries, modelling with high-frequency data and mixed-frequency models, modelling and forecasting real-time data, and the analysis of survey expectations. He has (co-) authored three books, co-edited two volumes on forecasting (most recently, The Oxford Handbook of Economic Forecasting for OUP, jointly with David Hendry) and has over 60 articles in refereed academic journals.

One of his most recent papers considers whether professional forecasters are able to accurately assess the uncertainty about the macroeconomic outlook. That is, whether their perceptions of how uncertain the future is at horizons up to two years ahead reflect the actual uncertainty they face.

Dr. Andreas G. F. Hoepner

Dr. Andreas G. F. Hoepner received his PhD from St Andrews in June 2010. Before joining the ICMA Centre, he worked as a Lecturer in Banking and Finance at the University of St Andrews (since February 2009) and as Deputy Director of the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance at the University of St. Andrews (since November 2011). He is currently also serving as the Academic Fellow to the United Nation's Principles for Responsible Investment (since September 2009), and as Senior Associate to the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership (since June 2013).

His research has won several awards including a 2012 Academy of Management Best Paper Proceeding, a 2010 PRI Academic Research Award, and 2011 and 2012 PRI/FIR Research Grant Awards. Dr. Hoepner has also presented professionally relevant insights from his research to many international financial institutions such as Allianz Global Investors, AXA, China Industrial Bank, Deutsche Bank, Generation Investment, Hermes, HGSM, MSCI, Nordea, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Scottish Widows or Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. His presentations have been simultaneously translated into Chinese, French, German and Japanese.

Rohit Sonika

Prior to joining the ICMA Centre, Rohit Sonika was a PhD student in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Lancaster University. He briefly worked in the industry between 2007 and 2009, doing both buy-side and sell-side research in Edinburgh and India, specialising in IT and Nuclear Energy.

Rohit holds an MSc in Finance and Investments from Edinburgh, and a Bachelors in Business Management from Bangalore, India.

His primary area of research interests include several topics in Empirical Corporate Finance. He is currently actively working on corporate payout policies and their importance given a certain executive compensation policy. He is also interested in topics concerning board structure and governance issues surrounding it. Rohit has previously presented at several conferences and workshops, including EFA, MFA, FMA and EFMA.

Yeqin Zeng

Yeqin Zeng will join the ICMA Centre as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Finance in September 2013. He holds double Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Economics from Wuhan University, a Master’s degree in Economics from Claremont Graduate University, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Washington.

His main research interest is in empirical asset pricing with an emphasis on financial institutions and their interactions with both financial markets and corporations. Besides the main research interest, he also has working papers on cost stickiness, trade credit, empirical asset bubble tests and relationship between bank loan and firm leverage.

Prior to joining the ICMA Centre, he taught undergraduate business finance and investment courses in the University of Washington. He also passed the first two levels of Charted Financial Analyst exam and finished the Computational Finance Certificate courses offered by the Statistics Department and the Applied Math Department of the University of Washington.