International Partners’ Week – meeting with the School of Finance team

A conversation on the perspectives of educational and research collaboration took place at Pokrovka.

School of Finance of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, one of the leading centers of expertise in corporate finance in Russia, considers international partnership development as its key priority. Existing opportunities for educational and research collaboration were discussed with colleagues from a wide range of International Partners’ Week 2023 participant universities .

The Head of School of Finance, Tenured Professor Irina Ivashkovskaya, and Associate Professor of School of Finance, Managing Director of National Rating Agency Sergei Grishunin presented relevant educational programs to their foreign colleagues. While describing master degree programs, Irina Ivashkovskaya highlighted a new English-taught online degree - Master of Business Analytics focusing on the cutting-edge concepts, models and instruments of enhanced value creation for financial and non-financial capitals. In addition, the development of earlier launched programs such as Strategic Corporate Finance, Applied Corporate Finance and Executive Education Open Enrollment Programmes was discussed. Taking into account the emergence of new concepts and competences in “green” financing, non-financial reporting, non-financial capitals’ management and inclusive economic growth, School of Finance aims to diversify its accumulated competences. Irina Ivashkovskaya calls on motivated foreign students, professors and experts to step up their efforts to create the next-generation financial education together.

Another large area for collaboration is represented by research activities of School of Finance in a wide range of fields, including business valuation and value creation, M&As’ efficiency, corporate financial resilience, ownership and corporate governance structure. Among the most relevant are research projects devoted to investigation of behavioral and human capital characteristics of Board members and top-executives, financing, investment and other decisions and practices for corporate inclusive growth and ESG transformation. Corporate Finance Centre plays the key role in these projects, accompanied by several specialized research groups of students led by researchers and business experts, for example, the “Centre for Research on Non-Financial Reporting” and “Innovations in banking and risk management” research groups.

While presenting the research and analytical activities of School of Finance, Irina Ivashkovskaya and Sergei Grishunin highlighted a currently performed project of Electronic Case Center. The project would accumulate best corporate practices, case materials and teaching notes within several collections:

–        Emerging Markets Corporate Finance collection – cases in financing, investing policies, strategic deals, valuation models, corporate governance, etc.;

–        Emerging Markets Banking collection – practices of ecosystems, innovations, digital assets and risk management in the banking sector;

–        Emerging Markets ESG Transformation collection – practices in “green” financing, ESG-reporting, corporate ESG-transformation strategies, etc.

Irina Ivashkovskaya stressed the importance of active participation of foreign researchers in this project in order to ensure representation of evidence from a wide range of emerging markets.

Taking into account the importance of academic communication and exchange of research findings, the School of Finance team not only participates in key international conferences, such as EIASM and EURAM, but also organizes its own events. For example, participants of the 6^th International annual workshop “Systematic Risk in Financial Sector” on the 17^th of November of 2023 will present their papers devoted to systematic risk measurement and indicators, financial resilience and contagions, credit cycles and bubbles, financial institutions’ performance in response to permanent crises and other issues. Moreover, Irina Ivashkovaskaya invited colleagues to take part in a new series of international workshops, “ESG Transformation: The Challenges for Emerging Capital Markets”, which will be launched on the 8^th–9^th of December of 2023. Participants of these annual workshops will discuss a wide range of relevant issues and findings in the field of corporate ESG-transformation, including ESG regulations’ development, corporate ESG strategies, ratings and other metrics of ESG performance, instruments of “sustainable” financing, ESG-reporting quality enhancement, etc.

Additionally, publication opportunities were presented. Foreign colleagues paid special attention to a joint series of monographs of School of Finance and Springer devoted to the investigation of a wide range of aspects of corporate finance on emerging capital markets, and to the Journal of Corporate Finance Research indexed by Web of Science and Scopus.

Summing up the results of the meeting, Irina Ivashkovskaya and Sergei Grishunin stressed the interest in the enhancement of educational and research collaboration. As the role of emerging countries in the global economy and in the academic field is rapidly increasing, the efficiency of such cooperation will determine the competitiveness of School of Finance and HSE University as a whole.