Hayne Leland Selected as the Recipient of the 2016 IAQF/Northfield Financial Engineer of the Year Award

NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Association for Quantitative Finance (IAQF) and Northfield have named Hayne Leland, Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley'sHaas School of Business, the 2016 IAQF/Northfield Financial Engineer of the Year (FEOY). The award will be presented to Professor Leland on February 2, 2017, at the Yale Club in New York City, during the IAQF/Northfield FEOY Award Gala Dinner.

A pioneer in the field of modern corporate finance, Hayne Leland has lead research on option pricing, capital structure and risk management has influenced the fields of banking, asset pricing, bond valuation, portfolio management, and portfolio insurance for nearly 50 years.

Upon his acceptance of the award Leland remarked, "To be selected to join such a distinguished group of prior FEOY recipients is indeed a great honor. That this honor is awarded by a committee of distinguished industry professionals as well as academics brings me special pleasure, as I believe a hallmark of good research is its ultimate usefulness to practitioners in the field."

Northfield President Dan diBartolomeo agrees: "Professor Leland is one of a small circle in the history of modern finance who has had a profound influence on both theory and practice across the entire range of investment markets. Together with his numerous collaborators, Hayne has produced a lifetime of pioneering work on which we all rely."

"On behalf of the IAQF, I want to express our sincere pleasure in awarding Hayne Leland the Financial Engineer of the Year. Professor Leland's body of work spans almost all areas of modern finance, ranging from option pricing to risk management to corporate finance. The industry is in great debt to Hayne for his insight and scholarship," said Richard Lindsey, Chair of the IAQF.

The annual IAQF/Northfield FEOY Award, established in 1993, recognizes individual contributions to the advancement of quantitative finance. A nominating committee of approximately 100 people, consisting of all the IAQF governing boards, submits nominations which are reviewed in a two-step process by a selection committee of 25 members. The selection committee includes the IAQF board of directors and senior fellows and was chaired by Dr. Martin Leibowitz, an IAQF senior fellow and 2014 FEOY award winner.

About Hayne Leland
At the University of California-Berkeley since 1974, he is Professor of the Graduate School and the Arno Rayner Professor Emeritus of Finance and Management at its Haas School of Business. Leland holds a Ph.D. and A.B from Harvard, and a M.Sc. degree from the London School of Economics.

Based on his research on portfolio insurance, Leland founded Leland O'Brien Rubinstein (LOR), for which he was named one of Fortune Magazine's "Businessmen of the Year" in 1987. LOR, the subject of Harvard case studies, was a pioneer in the field of portfolio insurance and also developed the SuperTrust, which received the initial exemptive relief for mutual funds to be traded on an exchange from the SEC in 1990. The SuperTrust became the nation's first exchange-traded fund (ETF) in 1992.  ETFs now account for several billion dollars in daily trading volume.

Leland has received numerous accolades for his seminal research, including the Stephen A. Ross Award for Research in Financial Engineering and an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Paris (Dauphine). He was the inaugural Pembroke Visiting Professor in International Finance at the University of Cambridge (UK) and has served on the scientific advisory boards sponsored by several institutions including Goldman Sachs and the Paris Stock Exchange. Leland was an independent Trustee of Barclays Global Investors Funds, one of the world's largest mutual fund complexes (now part of BlackRock).

His current research interests include developing innovative financial structures that allow energy market participants to capitalize or hedge future resource production, and the design of home equity-sharing contracts as a means to bring equity as well as debt financing to the housing sector.

Previous Award Recipients

Leland joins a prestigious list of recipients of the IAQF/Northfield Financial Engineer of the Year Award. They include: Fischer Black, Phelim Boyle, Douglas Breeden, Peter Carr, John Cox, Emanuel Derman, Darrell Duffie, Robert Engle, John Hull, Jonathan Ingersoll, Robert Jarrow, Martin Leibowitz, Bob Litterman, Bob Litzenberger, Andrew Lo, Robert Merton, Richard Roll, Stephen Ross, Mark Rubinstein, Eduardo Schwartz, Jim Simons, Jack Treynor, and Oldrich Alfons Vasicek. Myron Scholes received a lifetime achievement award in 2001.

About the International Association for Quantitative Finance (IAQF)

The IAQF (Formerly the IAFE) is the not-for-profit, professional society dedicated to fostering the profession of quantitative finance by providing platforms to discuss cutting-edge and pivotal issues in the field. Founded in 1992, the IAQF is composed of individual academics and practitioners from banks, broker dealers, hedge funds, pension funds, asset managers, technology firms, regulators, accounting, consulting and law firms, and universities across the globe.

Through frank discussions of current policy issues, sponsoring programs to educate the financial community and recognizing the outstanding achievements in the field, the IAQF acts as a beacon for the development of quantitative finance. Throughout its history, the IAQF´s pre-eminent leadership has positioned it to respond with savvy to the evolving needs of the financial engineering and quantitative communities.

For more information, please contact:
Northfield
Douglas Spencer 
+1-774-260-5560
136333@email4pr.com

IAQF
David Jaffe
+1-646-736-0705
136333@email4pr.com

About Northfield Information Services

Northfield is a market leader in providing investment professionals analytical and operating efficiency tools to enhance individual portfolio and firm-wide performance. Founded in 1985, Northfield has developed open, analytical models to identify, measure and control risk. These risk models cover most marketable securities traded world-wide. Based upon sound investment theory, Northfield's products and services have stood the test of time from users within the global institutional investment community. With over 300 clients worldwide with offices in Boston, Chicago, London and Tokyo, Northfield is a preferred partner for institutional investors and asset managers.

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SOURCE The International Association for Quantitative Finance