The world's two leading experts on financial contagion are leaving top US universities to head Imperial's Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis.
The new Centre, to be based in Imperial College Business School, will be headed by Professor Franklin Allen and Professor Douglas Gale. Frequent collaborators, Professors Allen and Gale, are renowned for their pioneering research into financial crises and market contagion - that is, when relatively small shocks in financial institutions spread and grow, severely damaging the wider economy.
The Centre has been hailed by leading figures in government, economics and academia on both sides of the Atlantic, including former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who said it will "make our financial system work better and make financial policy much wiser".
The Brevan Howard Centre has been launched thanks to one of the largest donations in business education history, £20.1 million. The gift comes from Brevan Howard, the world's third largest hedge fund, at the behest of its co-founder Alan Howard, an Imperial alumnus (MEng Chemical Engineering & Chemical Technology 1986).The formation of the Centre "marks a leap forward for Imperial College Business School," according to its new Dean Professor G. "Anand" Anandalingam, who has also joined Imperial from the US.
The Brevan Howard Centre's new Executive Director, Franklin Allen currently serves as Professor of Finance and Economics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, while Director of Research Douglas Gale is Professor of Economics at New York University.
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