This year, a record number of 35 presentations were delivered by doctoral researchers, many of which run in parallel sessions. The ICMA Centre boasts a very sizeable PhD programme with doctoral candidates specialising in very diverse areas of Finance. This was never more evident than this week with presentations ranging from traditionally important areas such as Empirical Asset Pricing, Mergers and Acquisitions and Portfolio Optimisation to more specialised topics including Shipping Finance, Socially Responsible Investing, Islamic Finance, Microfinance and Behavioural Finance.

Presentations concluded with students, supervisors and assessors enjoying some pizza while Head of School Professor Adrian Bell reflected on the experience by saying: “This was the equivalent of attending a finance conference without having to do the travel and I know a lot more about emerging themes in financial research than I did yesterday”.