Julian Franks

Julian Franks is Professor of Finance at London Business School, and former Academic Director of London Business School’s Centre for Corporate Governance. An expert in corporate finance, his research focuses on bankruptcy and financial distress, corporate ownership and control, shareholder activism by both hedge funds and active asset managers, cost of capital and regulation. His work on ownership and control (with Colin Mayer and Stefano Rossi) has won two international prizes. Two of his other papers have won best paper awards by the Journal of Financial Intermediation. He has been an editor of the Journal of Law, Finance and Accounting, and an associate editor of various other finance journals. He has served as a member of the DTI–Treasury committee reviewing the UK’s insolvency code, as a member of the Company Law Review’s committees on corporate governance, and as a member of the Breedon committee on non-bank sources of finance. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California at both Berkeley and Los Angeles, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Julian is currently an advisor to the Competition Market Authority. He has been an adviser to the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, a past member of the advisory board of ORR (the regulator for Network Rail), and was a member of an appeals panel for the New Zealand Commerce Commission. He has advised (with Professor Brealey) the Office of Constitutional Affairs on the issue of outside equity for law firms, and provided advice to a Treasury committee chaired by Paul Myners on a review of the governance of mutuals. He was an adviser to Ofcom for more than 15 years, and acted as an expert for them in three appeals to the Competition Authority. Julian is a partner at the consulting firm OXERA.