Dr F López-de-Silanes (b. 1966) has been appointed professor of Finance and Governance at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA). The chair has been established at the Amsterdam Business School of the UvA.

Dr López-de-Silanes’ research interests and main publications fall in the areas of International Corporate Finance and Financial Markets, Legal Reform and Privatization. He has been an adviser on these topics to several governments, international institutions and corporations. Some of his research shows the relevance of law and institutions for the functioning of markets and their development. He has many publications in top finance and economics journals and has recently published two books on Investor Protection and the Benefits of Privatization in Latin America.

Among other distinctions, he received Harvard's Wells Prize for the Best Dissertation in Economics (1995), the Brattle Prize for distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance of the American Finance Association (1999), and the Jensen Prize for the best papers published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the Areas of Corporate Finance and Organizations (2000). Before coming to Amsterdam, he taught at Harvard, Yale, and the Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris.