LEMMA W. SENBET (Ph.D, 1975) is the William E. Mayer Chaired Professor of Finance and Chair of Finance Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Previously he held two chaired professorships at the University of Wisconsin - Madison as the Charles Albright Professor of Finance (1987-90) and as Dickson-Bascom Professor (1983-87). As Visiting Professor, he taught at Northwestern University (1980-81), University of California-Berkeley (1984-85), and New York University (1996). He was also Distinguished Research Visitor at the London School of Economics in June 1994.

Professor Senbet is internationally recognized for his widely cited contributions to corporate and international finance, which have appeared in such journals as Journal of Finance, Journal of Business, Review of Financial Studies, etc. He has received numerous honors and awards. The 1986 survey ranked him third among world-wide contributing authors to the Journal of Finance for the period 1976-1985. He has been elected twice to the Board of Directors of the American Finance Association and has been the President of the Western Finance Association. In 1999 Professor Senbet was inducted into the Financial Economists Roundtable (FER), an official forum for senior financial economists who have made significant contributions to the Finance literature and seek to apply their knowledge to current policy debates.

Professor Senbet has also served on numerous journal editorial boards, including the Journal of Finance (11 years), the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (6 years), the Journal of Banking and Finance (5 years), and Financial Management (20 years). He has recently been selected as Executive Editor of Financial Management.

Professor Senbet has been a consultant for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and various governmental agencies in USA, Canada, and Africa on issues relating to corporate finance, capital market development, financial sector reforms, banking regulation, globalization, and institutional design. An Ethiopian by birth, he was awarded the 1970 Chancellor's Gold Medal as outstanding graduate of Haile Sellassie I University (received from the Emperor). Professor Senbet has chaired numerous national and international programs, delivered invited and keynote speeches, and served on numerous panels at international forums around the United States, the Pacific-Basin, and Africa, including at the Third African/African-American Summit (Dakar, 1995) and the Conference of Council of African Ministers of Finance (Addis Ababa, 1997). He has also served as a resource person for the African Economic Research Consortium (1994-00) and for the Governors' Forum (a forum of governors of central banks from East and Southern Africa, London, 1995 and 1997).

Professor Senbet has produced a string of doctoral graduates and placed them in faculty positions at such major research universities as Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Rutgers, and Florida. He is a recipient of the 1994 Allen Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Maryland Smith Business School.