On the 1 August 2007 LSE launched the academic Department of Finance, separating it from the former Department of Accounting and Finance. The finance faculty at LSE has grown in recent years to become one of the largest and most highly regarded finance groups in the UK and Europe. The creation of this stand-alone Department of Finance is a clear acknowledgement of both the growing importance of, and emphasis on research and teaching finance.
The Department of Finance is devoted to excellence in teaching and research in the full range of the various areas of finance including corporate finance, asset pricing theory, risk management, empirical analysis of capital markets, behavioural finance, portfolio analysis, derivatives pricing, microstructure and financial econometrics. It is closely associated with the LSE's Financial Markets Group (FMG) which regularly hosts a wide variety of seminars, conferences and public addresses by leading academics and practitioners.
The restructuring of the former Department of Accounting and Finance was agreed by LSE's governing body, Council, and the Academic Board to allow the continued development of both finance and accounting faculties as separate departments. The new Department of Finance will offer four specialist taught programmes and a PhD as follows:
- MSc Finance and Economics
- MSc Management and Regulation of Risk
- MSc Finance (Part-time)
- MSc Finance (Full-time) - starting September 2008
- PhD Finance
The Department of Finance also provides teaching on a number of other degree programmes throughout the School, most notably the joint degree programmes run in conjunction with the Department of Accounting; the BSc Accounting and Finance, Diploma in Accounting and Finance and MSc Accounting and Finance. The Department also provides finance teaching for students studying a wide range of programmes throughout the School.
The forthcoming 2007/8 academic year will see the Department of Finance continue to expand with the addition of two new faculty members (Vicente Cunat and Jack Favilukis), increasing the number of academic staff to 19, including 7 professors. The Department will continue to expand its portfolio of courses for both the programmes offered directly by the Finance Department and for other programmes throughout LSE. The Department has launched a range of new courses taught on its highly successful MSc Finance (Part-time) programme, FM406 Topics in Portfolio Management, FM407 Applied Financial Valuation, FM408 Financial Engineering and FM409 Risk Management and Financial Institutions. It will also introduce FM454 Corporate Finance I and FM455 Corporate Finance II, courses for the new MSc Management and Economics, run by the Department of Management.