Faculty

Professor Foued Ayari

Professor Ayari received his PhD in Financial Economics from the City University of New York and his MS from the University of Paris XIII (France).He is Assistant Professor of Finance at Wagner College and a faculty of the International Executive Programs at the Zicklin School of Business in New York.

Outside of the academia, he’s been providing Financial Training and Consulting Services to top tier Investment Banks on several areas of finance such as Derivatives, Credit Derivatives, Fixed Income, Investment Management and Risk Management. He’s also been in charge of exam training for the CFA and PRM exams. He has provided extensive training in US, Europe and Asia. Dr Ayari is the founder and CEO of Bullquest LLC , a financial training and consulting company based on Wall Street, New York.

Previously he worked as a Research Assistant-Consultant for the New York State Banking Department where he led projects on topics such as Credit Derivatives Market pricing methodologies and Basel II. Foued has also worked several years in real estate investment and management in Paris, France.

He is the author of an incoming book (2008, “Understanding Credit Derivatives”) with Wiley & Sons, which will provide a practical understanding of credit derivatives, their applications, their pricing and the strategies.

Professor Kenneth Bigel

Dr. Kenneth S. Bigel earned his M.B.A and Ph.D. degrees from New York University and is a professor of Finance and Business Ethics. He is a published scholar, and expert in the areas of market failure, forensic finance, investment management, and corporate finance. Dr. Bigel is a member of the National Association of Security Dealers Board of Arbitrators, and has provided expert testimony in notable cases including Enron. Dr. Bigel earned his M.B.A and Ph.D. degrees from New York University. He is also a Certified Financial Planner registrant.

Professor Viktoria Dalko

Professor Dalko received her MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently teaching at Harvard University. Before coming to Baruch, she was at Thunderbird,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Munich and Budapest University of Economic Sciences in Hungary. She served as Chief of Staff of the Committee of Budget, Taxes and Finances of the

Hungarian Parliament and advisor to the President of the National Bank of Hungary.

Professor Ali Fatemi

Ali Fatemi is the Dean of Graduate School of Business at the American University of Paris and Professor of Economics at the College of Arts and Sciences. His area of teaching and research interests are monetary economics, international finance and economics of financial markets. Formerly he has been chairman of economics department at he University of Akron in Ohio and at the American University of Paris. He has served as visiting Professor of Economics and Finance at the Universities of Westminster in London and at the Maastricht University in Holland.

He has been the recipient of several research grants from the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the UNESCO in Paris. He has co-authored three books in addition to many articles and is currently an editor of the International Review of Business and Economics. He writes regular columns on political and economic aspects of the Middle East for a weekly Keyhan, a weekly journal published in London. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School University in New York.

Professor Hadas Gelander

Hadas Gelander is professor of finance and accountancy at the College of Management in Israel and at Baruch College International programs department. She previously taught at Hebrew University and at Baruch College - Accountancy department . She is awarded CPA license. She is the Coordinator of Examinations of the Israeli Council of Public Accountants – Introduction to Accounting. She has consulted and organized training projects for KPMG, as the Coordinator of Training Department.

Professor Luis Hall

Dr. Luis J. Hall is an assistant professor in economics and finance at the Department of Economics of Universidad de Alicante in Spain. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from New York University. Dr. Hall held previous positions in the New York State Banking Department, as external-researcher for the World Bank and Inter-American Developing Bank and formerly taught at New York University. He has been consultant for several banks focusing his research primarily on credit and credit default. His research interest is in corporate finance.

Professor Armen Hovakimian

Armen Hovakimian, the Academic Director of the International Executive MS program in Finance, is a professor Finance and a Bert and Sandra Wasserman Fellow at the Zicklin school of Business,Baruch College,The City University of New York, Where he has taught undergraduate,MBA,Ph.D.,and Executive courses on various topics in corporate Finance.He has also held part-time academic positions at Boston College and Emory University.Professor Hovakimian's research involves analysis of various aspects of corporate finance and financial institutions, including corporate capital structure, credit ratings, seasoned and initial debt and equity offerings,mergers and acquisitions,financial analyst forecasts,deposit insurance, commercial banks' risk taking behavior. His research has been presented at a number of international conferences and has been published in top academic and practitioner finance journals, such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Business, Journal of Portfolio Management,Financial Analysts Journal, and others.He has received various grants and awards, including institute of New economic Thinking Research Grant(2010), FDIC center for financial research award (2004) ,Eugene M Lang Fellowship (1999), and three PSC-CUNY Research awards(2008-2010).In 2005,Professor Hovkimian Worked with the strategic Advisory Group of the UBS Investment Bank in New York City as a visiting scholar. Professor Hovakimian Received his Ph.D. in Finance in 1988 from Boston COllege. He also holds a degree of BS in computer Engineering and an MBA.

Professor Christopher Hessel

Professor Hessel is a full time member of the Zicklin School of Business teaching a full spectrum of courses ranging from undergraduate introduction to finance courses to Graduate advanced electives in risk management. He is also a member of the faculty for the executive masters in finance program. Professor graduated NYU Stern school with a PhD in Finance. Over his career he has published many scholarly papers in financial journals. For the past 16 years Professor Hessel has be running in-house executive training programs for banks and corporations and has hosted conferences in 21 countries for companies like Euromoney Financial Training, and Linton Capital Markets.

Professor Jae Won Lee

Professor Lee has been teaching in various graduate programs at Baruch College, including Jack Nash Honors MBA, Zicklin Fulltime Honors MBA, Executive MBA (EMBA), and Executive MS in Finance (EMSF) programs. In addition, Professor Lee has taught in CUNY Ph.D. programs in Business and Economics. In EMSF program, he has taught Quantitative Tools for Finance for over 12 years in New York campus, and taught International Financial Markets in Singapore campus for the past 3 years. In EMBA and MBA programs, he has taught International Financial Markets, International Economics, and Managerial Economics for over 27 years.

Prior to joining the academia, he had worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research as an analyst in the “Interest Rate Analysis”, “Productivity and Inflation” and “Diffusion of New Technology” projects. While in the academia, he has served as a consultant to Control Data Corporation, New York Telephone Company, and New York State Consumer Protection Board. Professor Lee has written scholarly articles and chapters in monographs in economics and finance. He received his BA in economics from Seoul National University, and his MA and Ph.D. in economics from City University of New York.

Professor Dan Levin

Dr. Levin had his Ph.D in Business and Applied Economics at The Wharton School, and was on the faculty of Wharton School, Tel Aviv University and The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Currently he is at the international MBA program at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business, and at Baruch College EMSF – CUNY program at Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Dr. Levin is an expert on the use and assessment of advanced technologies in various business and military applications. He was a board member in numerous companies and currently he is on the board of Polar Investments.

Professor Ronny Manos

Ronny Manos is a lecturer of Finance. Educated at the University of Birmingham (Ph.D Finance), her previous university appointment was at the Department of Economics, Loughborough University. She also lectured and taught at the Birmingham Business School. Her main areas of interest are in company finance in emerging markets, international finance and microfinance. She was nominated for the short list of finalists for the Haynes Prize for the Most Promising Scholar Award, Academy of International Business Annual Meeting 2005. Her works appear in journals such as the Journal of Economics and Business and Advances in Financial Economics. She teaches on the MBA and undergraduate programmes, and her courses include the following: Investment Management; Introduction to Finance; Multinational Business Finance; and Corporate Finance.

Professor Roger Mesznik

Roger Mesznik has more than twenty five year experience lecturing, teaching, and consulting on financial management, capital markets, financial instruments and securities -- including financial derivatives, economics of the firm, corporate restructuring, M&A, corporate finance, and managerial accounting. Mr. Mesznik taught in degree-granting executive programs -- mostly in executive MBA and MS programs, and in training senior executives and MBA students. Mr. Mesznik received numerous awards and distinctions for excellence in teaching.

Mr. Mesznik teaches at the Graduate Business School of Columbia University. Mr. Mesznik has taught or is teaching at the Stern School of Business at New York University, at INSEAD in France, at Baruch College of CUNY. Mr. Mesznik has also taught in Canada, Kuwait, Portugal, Austria, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and in the joint Columbia-Berkeley executive MBA program. Mr. Mesznik is a frequent lecturer and consultant to corporations and multi-national and international institutions on finance, financial management, and economic analyses. Mr. Mesznik has also held full-time positions in the electronics industry and the pharmaceutical industry in the US and overseas. Mr. Mesznik has published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Forecasting Letters, Risk Letters, The American Economist, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce.

Mr. Mesznik has a Ph.D. and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York City. He also undertook graduate and undergraduate studies in industrial engineering.

Professor Kenneth Mischel

Kenneth Mischel is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York. He got his PHD in Finance from Columbia University. His research interests include security pricing, risk management and the history of ideas about chance and its management. He has published numerous essays and book reviews in a wide variety of scholarly journals. He lives in Riverdale, New York with his wife and their three young children.

Professor John Paolicelli

John Paolicelli is the Senior Vice President of Tourneau LLC, the world’s largest retailer of luxury watches. He joined Tourneau in 2001 and served as Chief Financial Officer for a 6 year period. Prior to joining Tourneau, John was the Controller of Burberry USA for 13 years and has held managerial level positions at Associated Dry Goods Corporation and Arthur Andersen. John graduated from Fordham University in 1981 with a BS in Accounting and received his graduate degree in management from the Zicklin School of Business in 2007.

John is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York and a member in good standing in the following organizations: American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), NYS Society of CPAs (NYSCPA), the National Retail Federation (NRF) and the Retail Marketing Society (RMS).

Professor Thomas Piskula

Professor Piskula is a member of the Baruch College Economics and Finance Department faculty and teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate level. His research interests include international mergers and acquisitions, international economics, economic development, and corporate governance of multinational firms.

Professor Piskula has extensive experience as a fixed-income investment professional. With Citibank, he managed multi-billion dollar portfolios of short-term fixed income assets. These portfolios were funded by acquiring collateral in the form of cash as part of securities lending activity. The securities lent were owned by a wide variety of institutional Citibank customers, representing many categories of asset holders. Customers included large multinational firms, municipal and state governments, and European and Asian central banks.

With Prudential (US) Professor Piskula managed portfolios across the width of the fixed-income risk spectrum. He served as Chief Investment Officer for PruLiquidity Asset Management, an organization devoted to maximizing returns of holdings of less volatile fixed-income holdings. In addition to his portfolio management and leadership responsibilities there, he also developed the use of mortgage- and asset-backed securities in stable-vale portfolios. He also served as a Managing Director for Prudential Global Advisors where he provided expertise in the management of both corporate and sovereign emerging market debt. In this capacity he has traveled extensively meeting foreign heads of state and candidates as well as central bankers.

Professor Mosi Rosenboim

Mosi Rosenboim is a faculty member in Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and management ,Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and in the Department of Applied economics, Sapir college - both in Israel. Mosi has teaching experience in finance, Behavioral finance ,investment and Economics in various MBA and BA programs and also in economic and Finance consulting.

His Phd thesis, titled "Optimal incentive policy for attracting foreign direct investment", combines tools from finance theory, Behavioral finance theory, and auction theory to determine government's optimal economic policy for attracting FDI.His current research interests are finance, Behavioral finance, and regional economic policy.

Professor Michael Scarlatos

Professor Michael Scarlatos is a member of the Brooklyn college Economics and Finance department faculty and teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate level.His research interests include international economics and finance ,development economics,money,banking and financial markets, and currency markets.

Professor Scarlatos has extensive experience in policy making and financial market environments.Beginning as a consultant on a USAID project advising the government of Morocco on energy planning,he went on to work for the US treasury's international division .He directly advised a series of treasury secretaries and indirectly advised presidents on international issues including bilateral issues with various G7 countries and multilateral issues concerning the G7 as a group and the Organization to economic cooperation and development .He was specifically tasked with monitoring the dollar's exchange rate fluctuations including nominal bilateral rates (then against the German DM and the yen),trade-weighted (G7,G20 and OECD) and inflation adjusted trade-weighted exchange rates .Following the US treasury,Mr. Scarlatos began a new career as currency strategist for Bankers trust in London and wall street where, combining policymaker's insight with financial analysis ,he made investment recommendations which included his trading some of the recommended trades on his own Bankers trust trading account .Extensive travel-oriented contacts were made with financial decision makers in the US,Europe and Asia (including the monetary authority of Singapore and GIC).

Following his policymaking and market-oriented career ,Mr.Scarlatos began a teaching career involving graduates and undergraduates and focusing on currencies ,international macro economics and international finance attempting to reconcile theory with the practical world.

Professor Robert A. Schwartz

Robert A. Schwartz is Marvin M. Speiser Professor of Finance and University Distinguished Professor in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY. Before joining the Baruch faculty in 1997, he was Professor of Finance and Economics and Yamaichi Faculty Fellow at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1965. Professor Schwartz received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. His research is in the area of financial economics, with a primary focus on the structure of securities markets.

He has published over 50 refereed journal articles and fifteen books, including The Equity Trader Course (co-authored with Reto Francioni and Bruce Weber) Wiley & Sons, 2006, Equity Markets in Action: The Fundamentals of Liquidity, Market Structure and Trading (co-authored with Reto Francioni) Wiley & Sons, 2004, and Reshaping the Equity Markets: A Guide for the 1990s, Harper Business, 1991 (reissued by Business One Irwin, 1993). He has served as a consultant to various market centers including the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange, Instinet, the Arizona Stock Exchange, Deutsche Börse, and the Bolsa Mexicana.

From April 1983 to April 1988, he was an associate editor of The Journal of Finance, and he is currently an associate editor of the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance & Business Ventures, and is a member of the advisory boards of International Finance and The Journal of Trading. In December 1995, Professor Schwartz was named the first chairman of Nasdaq's Economic Advisory Board, and he served on the EAB until Spring 1999. He is developer, with Bruce Weber, of the trading and market structure simulation, TraderEx (http://www.etraderex.com/).

Professor Vanessa Strauss-Kahn

Vanessa Strauss-Kahn is an Associate Professor of Economics at ESCP Europe. She received a Ph.D. in Economics from New York University and has been faculty member at INSEAD for 7 years. Previously, she worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., as well as for the United Nations Development Program on specific missions. Professor Strauss-Kahn’s research focuses on firms’ location decision, clustering effects, outsourcing decision and its impact on the labor market, and more recently on headquarters location within and across countries. Her research has been published in renowned journals such as The American Economic Review or The European Economic Review. She has been active in refereeing for several journals and has written teaching cases. Since 2006, Vanessa Strauss-Kahn is Research affiliate in the International Trade program, Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), UK.

Professor Avner Wolf

Professor Wolf received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in Finance. His research is in the area of Derivative Financial Markets, Investment, Portfolio Management, Fixed Income and Security Market Microstructure. While working on his dissertation, Professor Wolf served as a staff economist in COMEX. Among his many duties there, he designed the futures gold and silver option.

Professor Wolf was a Chairman of the Department of Economics and Finance, the largest department at Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business, for the past 12 years. He is now the Executive Director of International Programs. He initiated and launched the international programs at Baruch College. Under his leadership, Baruch College has successfully launched Executive Master of Science programs in Finance, Marketing and Human Resource Management in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Baruch College is now in the process of starting these programs in Shanghai and Paris.

Professor Wolf has published numerous papers in academic as well as in professional journals and worked with Financial Institutions world wide on a variety of projects on derivatives. He has co-authored the book entitled The handbook of Interest Rate Risk Management, which is used intensively by professionals.

Visiting Professor Lawrence Zicklin

Mr. Zicklin received his B.B.A. from Baruch College as a major in accounting and his MBA from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Zicklin endowed the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College and helped design and endow the Center for Business Ethics Research at the Wharton School where he continues to be actively involved

Mr. Zicklin started his professional career as institutional sales at Merrill Lynch in 1959. He joined Neuberger Berman as a Partner in 1969 and served this company as the Chairman of its Executive Committee until Neuberger Berman became a public company in 1999, and was Chairman of the Board till 2003. Also, Mr. Zicklin is Director of both BZL BIOLOGICS, since 1997 to the present and LIQUIDNET INC. from 1999 to present.

As an educator, Mr. Zicklin started as an Adjunct professor at Stern School of New York University from 1989 to 1999 and continued as a Clinical professor at Stern School since 1999 to present. He received an excellence in teaching award in 1997 as an Adjunct Professor and a second excellence in teaching award in 2003 as a Clinical Professor. Meanwhile, Mr. Zicklin is Senior Fellow at the Wharton School—University of Pennsylvania.