Iftekhar Hasan holds the title of university professor at Fordham University, where he also serves as the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in Finance at the Gabelli School of Business, co-director of the Center for Research in Contemporary Finance, and director of the Ph.D. program. He further serves as a scientific advisor at the Bank of Finland; as a fractional faculty member at the University of Sydney; as a research fellow at the Financial Institution Center at the Wharton School as well as at the IWH Institute in Halle, Germany. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Financial Stability and has served as an associate editor with several other reputed academic journals.

Professor Hasan's research interests are in the areas of financial institutions, corporate finance, capital markets, and emerging economies. He has been involved in numerous academic research grants from different governmental, national, and international science foundations and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Hasan has more than 375 publications in print, including 16 books and edited volumes, and more than 280 peer-reviewed articles in distinguished academic outlets in finance, economics, international business, management, accounting, operation research, and information systems, including JFE, JFQA, JB, JME, RF, JFI, JMCB, JCF, FM, JBF, JIMF, SMJ, JIBS, HRM, JoM, BJM, JBE, RP, JAR, CAR, RAST, JAPP, JAAF, ABR, MSc, EJOR, and JMIS.

Professor Hasan has held visiting faculty positions at several research universities around the world, including the University of Rome, Italy; the University of Strasbourg, France; the University of Carlos III, Madrid; EPFL at Lausanne, Switzerland; the University of Limoges, France; National Taiwan University at Taipei; the University of Romania at Bucharest; Xi?an Jiaotong University, China, the University of Sydney, Australia; and NYU's Stern School of Business. Professor Hasan has also been a consultant or a visiting scholar for numerous international organizations, including the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency of the U.S. Treasury, the Banque de France, Development Bank of Japan, and the Italian Deposit Insurance Corporation.

A Fulbright scholar and a Fulbright selector, Professor Hasan is also a recipient of a ?Doctor Honoris Causa? degree from the Romanian-American University in Bucharest.?

Anthony Saunders is the John M. Schiff Professor of Finance at NYU Stern. Professor Saunders received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and has taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses at NYU since 1978. Throughout his academic career, his teaching and research have specialized in financial institutions and international banking. He has served as a visiting professor all over the world, including INSEAD, the Stockholm School of Economics, and the University of Melbourne.

Professor Saunders holds positions on the Board of Academic Consultants of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors as well as the Council of Research Advisors for the Federal National Mortgage Association. In addition, Dr. Saunders has acted as a visiting scholar at the comptroller of the Currency and at the Federal Monetary Fund. He is an editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of Financial Markets, Instruments and Institutions, as well as an associate editor of eight other journals, including Financial Management and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. His research has been published in all of the major finance and banking journals and in several books. He has just published a new edition of his textbook, Financial Institutions Management: Risk Management Perspective for McGraw-Hill (4th edition) as well as a 2nd edition of his book on Credit Risk Measurement for John Wiley & Sons (with Linda Allen).?

Bill Megginson is Professor and Price Chair in Finance at the University of Oklahoma?s Michael F. Price College of Business. He is also Visiting Professor at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing) and Consulting Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies. From 2002 to 2007, he was a voting member of the Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance?s Global Advisory Committee on Privatization. During spring 2008, he was the Fulbright Tocqueville Distinguished Chair in American Studies and Visiting Professor at the Université-Paris Dauphine. He received the University of Oklahoma?s top research prize, a George Lynn Cross Research Professorship, in April 2010. From 2013 to 2019 he was the Saudi Aramco Chair Professor in Finance at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Professor Megginson's research interest has focused in recent years on the privatization of state-owned enterprises, sovereign wealth fund investments, energy finance, and investment banking principles and practices. He has published refereed articles in several top academic journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Foreign Policy. His co-authored study documenting significant performance improvements in recently privatized companies received one of two Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Awards for outstanding research published in the Journal of Finance during 1994. He is author or co-author of nine textbooks.

Professor Megginson?s research has been frequently cited in academic and professional publications. His articles have been downloaded over 66,000 times from the Social Sciences Research Network, and his books and articles have been cited over 23,000 times (according to Google Scholar). His co-authored privatization survey article, published in the Journal of Economic Literature in 2001, is the eighth most widely cited finance article published since 2000, and the most widely cited article published in 2001. He is associate editor for two academic journals, and has served as a privatization consultant for the New York Stock Exchange, the OECD, the IMF, the World Federation of Exchanges, and the World Bank. He has visited 85 countries during his lifetime, and has lived in Spain, Pakistan, France, and Saudi Arabia, in addition to the United States.

Dr. Megginson has a B.S. degree in chemistry from Mississippi College, an MBA from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D. in finance from Florida State University. Prior to entering academia in 1986, he worked for five years as a petroleum chemist at the world's largest styrene monomer plant and at the largest independent petroleum refinery in the United States. He has been a Visiting Professor at Duke University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Zurich, the University of Amsterdam, Bocconi University, Université-Paris Dauphine.