SUSTAINABLE FINANCE - Key Persons

Aleksandar Andonov

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor in Finance at the Erasmus School of Economics
  • Finance - Erasmus University
Aleksandar Andonov is an Assistant Professor in Finance at the Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He completed his PhD in Finance at Maastricht University. In his research, Aleksandar focuses on institutional investors, in particular pension funds and the money management industry, investigating the asset allocation and performance of these investors in public and private markets. His research ideas and findings have been presented at academic and industry conferences, and have been covered in popular financial media, such as the Economist and Financial Times. Aleksandar spent the 2012 spring semester at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. In 2013, he visited the University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business. At Erasmus University, Aleksandar teaches master courses on risk management and behavioral finance, and bachelor course on investments.

Andrea Chegut

Job Titles:
  • Research Scientist - MIT
Andrea Chegut is an ECCE Research Affiliate from the Massachusetts Institute Technology. Andrea investigates the financial performance of innovations in commercial real estate products; from data centers to green buildings, she looks at the value and economic growth implications of technical change and innovation in buildings. A primary innovation of interest for Andrea is energy efficient and sustainable real estate. She has published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Urban Studies and the Journal of Sustainable Development. Her dissertation Innovation in Commercial Real Estate looked at the impact of innovation on the economic outcomes of commercial real estate in London and New York City, the two largest commercial real estate markets globally. Andrea is also involved in policy research for the EU 7th Framework Program BEEM-Up, which is an analysis of the valuation and uptake of energy efficiency in housing in the EU. This four year project with 28 EU-wide partners in construction, innovation and academia will result in a value analysis of "energy efficient" housing, a mass European dissemination strategy and 340 energy retrofitted housing units. In addition to her research Andrea is an active public speaker on sustainablity and energy efficiency in policy and practitioner forums such as the Royal Institue of Charterd Surveyors, IPD, Green Building Councils, EcoBuild and BREEAM. Andrea earned her BS and BA in Economics and Philosophy, respectively, from the College of Charleston, Charleston SC, US. The following three years were spent in the US capital markets at Sherman Capital Markets conducting analytics and business intelligence. In 2009, she left for Europe where she earned her MSc in Economics and Law from Utrecht University. Andrea has a PhD in Finance from Maastricht University.

Ann Vanstraelen

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Accounting & Assurance
Ann Vanstraelen is Full Professor of Accounting and Assurance Services at Maastricht University and serves as Head of the department of Accounting and Information Management. She is co-coordinator of the GSBE research theme: Culture, Ethics and Leadership. Her research interests relate to the broad field of auditing and assurance services, governance, corporate reporting and disclosure, with a specific focus on the quality of accounting and auditing practices. She has been involved in several research projects including commissioned research by ACCA, IFAC and the European Commission. Ann Vanstraelen has published in leading academic journals including The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Review of Accounting Studies. She serves as an editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory and is member of several editorial boards. Ann Vanstraelen is actively involved in the European Accounting Association in various functions, including national representative of the Netherlands, member of the Standing Scientific Committee, and chair of the organizing committee of the 2016 EAA Conference in Maastricht. She was a visiting professor at KULeuven, London School of Economics, Stanford University, and University of New South Wales.

Arian Borgers

Job Titles:
  • Investment Manager - Philips Pension Fund
Arian Borgers obtained his doctorate from Tilburg University. Subsequently, he worked at the Finance department of Maastricht University as a researcher. Arian currently works as an Investment Manager at Philips Pension Fund. His main responsibility is monitoring the investment portfolio. He remains active in academia as a research affiliate at ECCE. His main research agenda is on asset pricing effects of socially responsible investments. Related, he is also interested in household financial and sustainable behavior. His first paper got rewarded with a BSI Gamma grant and the Sustainalitics prize of PRI for best academic responsible investment paper. He published his research in the Journal of Empirical Finance, and the Journal of Banking and Finance. Arian also produced proprietary research for NN Investment Partners (formerly ING Investment Management). He investigated how Environmental, Social, and Governance information can contribute to risk-adjusted portfolio performance both in developed and emerging markets.

Clarissa Hauptmann

Job Titles:
  • Postdoctoral Researcher - Oxford University
  • Researcher at the University of Oxford
Clarissa Hauptmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, Saïd Business School. In her current role, she manages the quantitative research stream on purposeful ownership within the Ford Foundation program. At Oxford, she is a research fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and member of Green Templeton College. Her main research interest is in the area of corporate sustainability performance, non-financial disclosure, and the interaction of these items with capital markets. Clarissa earned her Ph.D. in Finance at Maastricht University. She was a visiting doctoral researcher at Harvard Business School. Clarissa holds a Master degree in Financial Economics with a specialization in banking and a Bachelor degree in Economics. Clarissa is a CFA charterholder.

Daniel Hann

Job Titles:
  • Portfolio Manager - DWS
Daniel Hann holds a PhD in finance from Maastricht University. His research focuses on responsible investing and the relevance of extra-financial information for bond and equity investors. His work has been awarded the 2010 Moskowitz Prize for quantitive research on sustainable investing by the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley. Since 2011 Daniel works for the Deutsche Bank Group at DWS Investments GmbH, one of Europe's largest retail asset managers.

Dirk Brounen

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Real Estate Economics - Tilburg Universty
In my academic research I focus on the financial economics of relate to real estate markets. Typically, I opt for empirical studies in which the facts are leading.

Dr. Paul Smeets

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Associate Professor in Finance at Maastricht University
  • Associate Professor of Social Finance
Dr. Paul Smeets is Associate Professor in Finance at Maastricht University. His research investigates the motives of investors to choose for socially responsible investments, for which he obtained a Veni grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO). He also investigated philanthropy of millionaires in the United States, France and the Netherlands. His papers are published in The Journal of Finance, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and PNAS. His work has been covered by outlets such as The New York Times, BBC News and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Smeets visited the University of California San Diego, the University of California Los Angeles and the Toulouse School of Economics. He has been working together with several national and international financial institutions such as Robeco, ABN AMRO, Triodos Bank, Pension fund Detailhandel and Deutsche Bank.

Erdal Aydin

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor of Economics - Sabanci University
  • Researcher at the Finance Department of Maastricht University
Erdal Aydin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Finance Department of Maastricht University. He completed his PhD in Economics at Tilburg University. In his research, he focuses on energy policies in the residential sector.

Erkan Yönder

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor of Finance and Real Estate at Ozyegin University
  • Finance - Concordia University
Erkan Yönder is an assistant professor of Finance and Real Estate at Ozyegin University, Turkey and an ECCE Research Affiliate at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. degree in finance and real estate at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He also visited the Center for Real Estate, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, as a visiting Ph.D. student. His main research interests consist of securitized real estate (REITs), corporate finance, behavioral finance and corporate sustainability. He has written several papers, some of which have been published in the Journal of International Money and Finance and additionally, as a chapter in a book published by University of Pennsylvania Press. One of his papers is also forthcoming in the Real Estate Economics. Erkan was in the top 0.1 percent during the University Entrance Exam in Turkey. He previously completed B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Economics (with Honours) at Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Frank Moers

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Accounting & Information Management
  • Professor of Management Accounting & Control and Scientific Director of the Graduate School of Business
Frank Moers is Professor of Management Accounting & Control and Scientific Director of the Graduate School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University. He holds a M.Sc. (Economics and Business Administration) and a Ph.D., which he received from Maastricht University in respectively 1996 and 2001. He was a Visiting Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His field of expertise is performance measurement and incentives. He is especially interested in examining performance measurement and incentives issues from a broader organizational design perspective, taking into account, for example, internal labor markets and internal capital markets. In addition, he is interested in the interplay between organizational design and disclosure. His research is economics-based, quantitative empirical research, primarily using archival data (both public and proprietary). Frank's research has been published in top academic journals such as Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and Academy of Management Journal.

Gordon Clark

Job Titles:
  • Institutional Shareholder Engagement With Japanese Firms
  • Professor - Oxford University
Gordon L Clark DSc (Oxon) FBA is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford University, holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Peter's College and is Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics (Melbourne). Until recently he was also a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School. Previous academic appointments have been at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School and Monash University. Other honours including include being Andrew Mellon Fellow at the US National Academy of Sciences and Visiting Scholar Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst at the University of Marburg. He has held a number of senior administrative posts including Associate Dean (Finance, Graduate Studies) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Monash University (Melbourne), Chair of the Faculty Board of Anthropology and Geography (Oxford), and most recently Director and Head of the Oxford University Centre for the Environment including the School of Geography and the Environment. Professor Clark has served on the Social Science Committee of the British Academy, is an elected member of the Oxford University's Socially Responsible Investment Committee (overseeing investment of the university's endowment), is an employer-nominated trustee of the Oxford Staff Pension Scheme, is a consultant to MetallRente (Germany's largest DC pension plan), and is a Founding Governor of the UK Pension Policy Institute.

Harry Hummels

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Ethics
  • Professor of Ethics, Organizations & Society
Harry Hummels is a professor of Ethics, Organizations and Society at Maastricht University, and joined ECCE in 2007. His teaching and research focuses on the search for responsible behaviour in trade, industry, and the financial world. He focuses on responsible investing - more in particular on the topic of impact investing. He worked in senior management positions for ING Bank, SNS Asset Management and ACTIAM on responsible investing and impact investing between 1999 and 2015. Professor Hummels combines his function in Maastricht with a chair in Social Entrepreneurship at Utrecht University School of Economics. He is member of the board of Society Impact, Special Advisor of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and advisor of UNDP, both on impact investing. Research Interests: Responsible Investing, Impact Investing, Corporate Responsibility, Responsible Entrepreneurship

Jaap Bos

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • ECCE Co - Director / Professor of Banking & Finance
  • Professor
Jaap Bos is Professor of Banking and Finance at Maastricht University. His work has been published in the Journal of Business, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Development Economics, World Development and the Journal of Banking and Finance. His research interests include the role of productivity differences, spillovers and innovation in explaining economic growth, and the analysis of micro-developments in efficiency and competition. From 2002 to 2004, he was a member of the Basel II Research Task Force and co-author of the BIS background paper entitled ‘Studies on the Validation of Internal Rating Systems'. Together with Jacob Bikker (Netherlands Central Bank), he published "Bank Performance" (Routledge, 2008), a theoretical and empirical framework for the analysis of profitability, competition and efficiency. In 2009, he was a member of the research team that investigated the credit crisis for Dutch parliament as part of a parliamentary investigation. Jaap Bos is listed by IDEAS/Repec as one of its top authors in the field of efficiency and productivity.

Jeroen Derwall

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance at Utrecht University School of Economics
  • ECCE Co - Founder / Associate Professor
Jeroen Derwall is associate professor of sustainable finance at Utrecht University School of Economics since November 2020. In addition he holds a tenured position at Maastricht University, and is co-founder of the European Centre for Sustainable Finance. Previously he also was associate professor at Open University of The Netherlands and he held faculty positions at Tilburg University and RSM Erasmus University. His research focuses on sustainable finance and investments, shareholder activism, mutual funds, and performance analysis. His studies on sustainable finance (google citations) have received the Moskowitz Prize from the Center of Responsible Business at UC Berkeley (2005), the Finance & Sustainability Research Award of the French Social Investment Forum (2005, 2007), and the PRI/Sustainalytics Best Paper Award (2012). Through ECCE, his research agenda has received external funding or data support from MISTRA (2006-2011) and various institutional investors. He publishes international peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, and Financial Analysts Journal, and has received attention in various financial media such as The Economist, Forbes, Financieel Dagblad, International Herald Tribune, Investment & Pensions Europe, and Le Monde. On the teaching front, Jeroen has experience developing Master's programs and courses in (Sustainable) Finance, and courses on academic and reserach skills. He has also (co)developped and taught professional, postgraduate, MBA, and executive courses for Amsterdam Institute of Finance, Dutch Financial Analysts Association (VBA/VU Amsterdam), Duisenberg School of Finance, TIAS Business School, and Maastricht University. He was awarded in 2015 "Excellent Graduate Educator" at both Maastricht University and Tilburg University. Next to his employment he has been judge for the Kellog School of Management's Moskowitz Prize on socially responsible investing research, member of Kellog's Impact and Sustainable Finance Faculty Constrium, and co-organizer the inaugural conference of the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance & Investments (GRASFI). Jeroen has a PhD in Financial Management from RSM Erasmus University.

Judy Chalabi

Job Titles:
  • Finance - Eramus University
Judy Chalabi is a PhD candidate in Finance at Maastricht University since April 2013. Judy graduated from the double-degree program with Queen's University in Canada, and holds a MSc in International Business-Finance from Maastricht University, and a Master of International Business from Queen's University. Her dissertation focuses on the interaction between CSR and the cost of debt capital. Next to her research, Judy teaches at the bachelor and master level.

Kees Koedijk

Job Titles:
  • Director
  • Professor of Finance - TIAS & Tilburg University

Lei Chen

Job Titles:
  • ECCE Research Affiliate
  • Research Fellow at the School of Accounting
Lei Chen is a research fellow at the School of Accounting at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE). His research interests include corporate governance, the board of directors, financial fraud, and short sellers. He publicly defended his dissertation "Institutions and Corporate Governance" and obtained the doctoral degree in March, 2013. While being an ECCE PhD student, Lei Chen has presented in many international conferences and won the best paper prize from ECCCS PhD Symposium and Workshop 2012 and the "Highly Commended" paper award from the 10th International Conference on Corporate Governance from Center for Corporate Governance Research at University of Birmingham in 2012. Before joining ECCE at Maastricht University, he received his master degree from University of Groningen, the Netherlands and the bachelor degree from Sichuan University, China.

Maarten Jennen

Job Titles:
  • Senior Investment Analyst at ING Real Estate Investment Management
  • Senior Strategist - PGGM Investments
Maarten Jennen is Senior Investment Analyst at ING Real Estate Investment Management and Assistant Professor of Finance and Real Estate at the Rotterdam School of Management. Maarten holds a PhD in Real Estate Finance from the Rotterdam School of Management. His main research focus is on performance evaluation and drivers in commercial real estate markets. His research findings have been published in leading academic real estate journals such as Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Urban Studies and are being implemented within the real estate investment management business of ING.

Matteo Millone

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor in Finance at VU University Amsterdam
Matteo Millone is Assistant Professor in finance at VU University Amsterdam. He has a multidisciplinary background in Economics, Law and Political Science. His work is focused on banking in emerging countries and the interaction between social and financial performance at the level of both institutions and investors. His work on benchmarking the performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) has been published on World Development. He has also researched the effect of credit registries and credit bureaus on loan disbursement and performance in markets with high information asymmetries. He in currently interested in regulatory arbitrage in banking.

Matthew E. Kahn

Job Titles:
  • ECCE Research Affiliate
Matthew E. Kahn (born 1966) is a leading American educator in the field of environmental economics. After earning his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, he began teaching at various universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, and Tufts. He is currently a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment, Department of Economics, Department of Public Policy, Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Law School. He is a Research Associate at the NBER. Kahn has published over 90 papers and has authored Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press, 2006) and (with Dora Costa) Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War, which was published late in 2008 by Princeton University Press. In 2010, Basic Books published his book on climate change adaptation and cities titled; "Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter World. He is currently writing a book on China's Green Cities joint with Siqi Zheng of Tsinghua University. Kahn's research focuses on the environmental, urban, real estate and energy economics. He is also known for his work on social capital. He blogs on these topics at greeneconomics.blogspot.com. In 2009, the Wall Street Journal named him one of the top 25 Economics bloggers. He is married to Dora L. Costa. Professor Costa is an economic historian and demographer who teaches at UCLA.

Michael Viehs

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Manager
Michael Viehs is Assistant Manager within the Equity Ownership Services (EOS) team of Hermes Investment Management in London. In this position he is responsible for corporate engagements on environmental, social, governance (ESG), and strategic issues and for producing research on responsible investing. In his role at Hermes EOS, he is the sector lead for automotives and also responsible for developing a consistent and stringent proxy voting policy and corporate governance principles for the German market. Michael is also a Honorary Research Associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Before his appointment at Hermes EOS, Michael was Research Director at University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. His work on responsible investment, corporate governance, and stewardship has been published in Corporate Governance: An International Review and Annals of Social Responsibility. Amongst others, he is co-author of the widely recognised study "From the Stockholder to the Stakeholder - How Sustainability Can Drive Financial Outperformance" and contributed a chapter on active ownership to the recently published book "Re-Imagining Capitalism" (Oxford University Press) edited by Dominic Barton, Dezsö Horvath, and Matthias Kipping. Michael presented his work at several top-notch academic and industry conferences on corporate finance, corporate governance, and responsible investing around the world. Michael holds a B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Maastricht University, School of Business and Economics.

Mike Langen

Job Titles:
  • ECCE PhD Student
Mike Langen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Finance at Maastricht University. His research is on real estate, focusing on externalities and sustainability factors in the residential real estate market.

Nadja Guenster

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Finance - University of Munster
  • Professor of International Financial Management at the Muenster School of Business
Nadja Guenster is Professor of International Financial Management at the Muenster School of Business and Economics, University of Muenster, Germany, and a visiting faculty fellow at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Nadja's research focuses on the intersection of corporate social responsibility and finance, and asset price bubbles. Her papers have been published in journals such as the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Asset Management, and European Financial Management. She received the 2005 Moskowitz Prize for the best quantitative study in the SRI domain, 2005 European Finance and Sustainability Research Award, the 2011 Crowell Prize by Panagora Asset Management, and the 2011 European Financial Management Top Download Best Paper Award. Nadja obtained her PhD from RSM Erasmus University in 2009.

Nils Kok

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Associate Professor in Finance and Real Estate at Maastricht University
  • Associate Professor of Finance & Real Estate
  • Chief Economist at GeoPhy
Nils Kok is an associate professor in Finance and Real Estate at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. His research interest ranges from urban economics to real estate investments, including topics such as land prices and regulation, transparency of global property markets, international property investments, and demographics. His research has appeared in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Public Economics, The RAND Journal of Economics, and Real Estate Economics. You can also find his research in newspapers, such as the Guardian, the Australian Financial Review, Das Handelsblatt, Le Monde and Het Financieele Dagblad, and in industry publications, such as Bloomberg, Europe Real Estate and Vastgoedmarkt. In addition to his academic position, Nils also serves as the Chief Economist at GeoPhy, the leading provider of daily, automated valuations for the real estate sector, combining advanced research and reporting tools with a database that currently covers over 100 million buildings across 50 countries. Previously, Nils was the founder and CEO of GRESB, a global ESG rating company for real estate and infrastructure investments. Nils received his PhD from Maastricht University (Netherlands) and lives in Westport (CT) with his wife, Lian, and his two kids.

Nora Pankratz

Job Titles:
  • ECCE PhD Student
Nora Pankratz is a PhD candidate in Finance at Maastricht University and (prior) visiting Ph.D. researcher at Toulouse School of Economics as well as Rotman School of Management in Toronto. She graduated from the M.Sc. program in Sustainable Finance from Maastricht University and holds a B.Sc. degree in Business Administration from the University of Mannheim. Her research interests lie at the interface of finance and sustainability with a focus on the impact of climate-related risks on firm operations as well as investor expectations. Apart from that, Nora has worked on projects related to corporate governance, active ownership and the materiality of ESG factors in fixed income investing.

Piet Eichholtz

Job Titles:
  • CEO Overconfidence, Corporate Investment Activity, and Performance
  • CEO Political Preferences and the Sustainability of REITs
  • Executive Compensation in UK Property Companies
  • Professor of Finance
  • Professor of Real Estate Finance
Piet Eichholtz is Professor of Finance and Real Estate. He is currently also a member of the Housing Market Scenario Committee of BPD, and the Investment Committees of the Dutch Construction Workers' Pension Fund and the Elisabeth Strouven Foundation. As entrepreneur he started Global Property Research, an international consultancy firm specializing in property companies. Subsequently, he co-founded Finance Ideas, a financial consultancy company specialized in financing structures for real estate owners in the semi-public realm, and GRESB, the Global Real Estate Securities Benchmark. Most of his academic research involves real estate markets, with a focus on international investment, portfolio management, property companies, and housing markets.

Rachel Pownall

Job Titles:
  • Maastricht University As a Professor
  • METEOR Fellow at Maastricht University
  • Professor of Art & Finance
Rachel works at Maastricht University as a Professor of Art and Finance. She also holds a part-time position at TIAS School for Business and Society, holding the first Van Gogh Chair in Art Finance and Museum Management. She is a leading scholar in Art Finance, and alternative investments, such as emotional assets. She works in the areas of behavioural finance, risk management, sustainability and asset pricing. Her work has been published in a number of international Journals, including the European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Empirical Finance, and the Journal of Portfolio Management. Rachel is a METEOR fellow at Maastricht University and a CENTRE fellow at Tilburg University, where she also part of the Tilburg Sustainability Centre at Tilburg University. She has taught at Sotheby's Institute for Art and has consulted for many Art Advisory services; as of 2016 she has been commissioned to write the TEFAF Global Art Market Report. In 1996, Rachel completed a First-class Honours Bachelor's degree in Economics and Econometrics at the University of Kent, in the UK. She completed a Masters in Finance and Econometrics in 1998, and then went on to complete her PhD on Risk Management in International Financial Markets at Erasmus University, Rotterdam in 2001.

Rob Bauer

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • ECCE Director / Professor of Institutional Investors
  • Private Shareholder Engagement on Material EGS Issues
  • Professor of Finance
  • Who Withdraws Shareholder Proposals and Does It Matter?
Rob Bauer is Professor of Finance (chair: Institutional Investors) at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics in The Netherlands. His academic research is focused on pension funds, strategic investment policy, mutual fund performance, responsible investing, shareholder activism and corporate governance. Rob publishes regularly in professional and academic journals and is a frequent speaker on national and international conferences. Rob is also Director of the European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) at Maastricht University, and Executive Director of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) in Toronto, Canada. Rob is also founder and managing director of Rob Bauer Consultants in which he advises and supports institutional investors on topics related to strategic investments.

Robin Braun - VP

Job Titles:
  • Vice President
  • Sustainability Office - DWS Group / Show Profile
Robin Braun is Vice President - Global Business Manager, Trading & Product Development, Product Platformworks of Deutsche Bank Group - one of Europe's largest retail asset managers. In 2010 Robin obtained his PhD in finance from Maastricht University. His dissertation on Stock Market Manipulation has dealt with corporate finance, corporate governance, and executive compensation topics. Robin has published his articles in the Financial Analyst Journal and the Journal of Economic Geography.

Roger Otten

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor of Finance at Maastricht University
  • Finance & ABP
Roger Otten is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His main research topics include mutual funds and responsible investing (RI). His work on RI was awarded with the 2002 Moskowitz prize for outstanding research in SRI. Roger has been published in various academic journals such as Journal of Banking and Finance, European Financial Management, Managerial Finance, Accounting & Finance, Pacific Basin Finance Journal and Journal of Asset Management. He holds both a PhD and MSc in finance from Maastricht University. In addition to his academic affiliation he is employed at ABP Pension fund in The Netherlands. Roger serves as a Senior Policy Advisor Investments to the ABP Board of Trustees.

Rogier Holtermans

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor of Real Estate Finance - University of Guelph
  • Assistant Professor of Real Estate Finance at the College of Business
Rogier Holtermans is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate Finance at the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. Prior to becoming a faculty member with the real estate group at Guelph he was a Postdoctoral Scholar - Research Associate at the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate. His research interests include the financial implications of information asymmetry and sustainability in real estate markets. His research papers have been published in Energy Policy, Journal of Economic Geography and Real Estate Economics, and he regularly presents his findings at academic conferences, most notably the Allied Social Sciences Association meetings, the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association meetings, and the Financial Management Association meetings. Moreover, Rogier received the Real Estate Research Institute's 2017 dissertation research award. Rogier holds a Bachelor and Master in International Business and a PhD in Finance from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. As a teacher, he taught courses on Corporate and Venture Finance, Real Estate Finance, and Real Estate Investment and Valuation, and supervised students' master theses. In addition to his personal research, Rogier was involved in the management and acquisition of two projects for the European Commission and multiple research projects in cooperation with Bentall Kennedy, CBRE, and Measurabl. During the doctoral program he held visiting researcher positions at: the U.S. Green Building Council in Washington, DC; the MIT Center for Real Estate in Cambridge, MA; and the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, CA. Rogier is a research affiliate of the European Center for Corporate Engagement, the European Property Research Institute, and a member of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and Financial Management Association.

Stefan Straetmans

Job Titles:
  • Finance
  • Associate Professor of Finance at Maastricht University
Stefan Straetmans is currently an Associate Professor of Finance at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His research interests are situated on the interface between finance and macroeconomics. They include, inter alia, financial crises and financial contagion, international finance, financial stability (tail risk and systemic risk), financial risk management, and all kinds of applications of the statistical theory of extreme values in financial economics; but he is also interested in the relationship between corporate governance/corporate social responsibility and the financial industry's risk-taking behaviour and overall stability. His work has been published in numerous academic journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Empirical Finance, the Journal of International Money and Finance or Real Estate Economics. He acted as a consultant for the European Central Bank, KPN Pension Fund and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also an Associate Editor of "Studies in Economics and Finance" and the "Euro-Mediterranean economics and Finance Review".

Stefanie Kleimeier

Job Titles:
  • Professor of Entrepreneural Finance & Banking
Stefanie Kleimeier earned a doctorate at the University of Georgia (USA) and is currently Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the Open Universiteit (The Netherlands), Associate Professor of Finance at the Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and Associate Professor Extraordinary at the University of Stellenbosch Business School (South Africa). Her research focusses on project finance, syndicated loans, retail banking, financial market linkages and integration and has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Financial Stability, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Applied Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Management and the Journal of International Money and Finance. She received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, Dutch Science Foundation and the European Credit Research Institute, consulted with the EU and the Center for European Policy Studies and taught graduate courses in 11 countries in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Stefanie Kleimeier is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Financial Economic Policy and of the editorial board of the International Review of Financial Analysis, Finance Research Letters and Journal of Financial Research.

Thies Lindenthal

Job Titles:
  • Researcher
  • Lecturer - Cambridge University
Thies Lindenthal is a seasoned internet entrepreneur and researcher, holding a Ph.D. in Real Estate Finance from Maastricht University. IDNX.com is his newest project, linking two of his most important intellectual playgrounds, traditional real estate research and the economics of the internet.

VU Amsterdam

Job Titles:
  • Assistant Professor of Finance
Matteo Millone is Assistant Professor in finance at VU University Amsterdam. He has a multidisciplinary background in Economics, Law and Political Science. His work is focused on banking in emerging countries and the interaction between social and financial performance at the level of both institutions and investors. His work on benchmarking the performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) has been published on World Development. He has also researched the effect of credit registries and credit bureaus on loan disbursement and performance in markets with high information asymmetries. He in currently interested in regulatory arbitrage in banking.