C U R R E N T   R E L E A S E
October 14, 1999

Sridhar Moorthy named first incumbent of Manny Rotman Chair in Marketing

TORONTO - Professor Sridhar Moorthy has been named the first incumbent of the Manny Rotman Chair in Marketing at the University of Toronto. The newly established chair is the first of a series of academic endowments made possible by a 1995 gift of more than $15 million from Sandra and Joseph Rotman.
           Moorthy, who was named "Rotman Professor of the Year" by the MBA class of 1999, is an expert in marketing strategy and brand management who received his PhD from Stanford. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer for bringing economics-based thinking to marketing problems. In addition to Rotman, he has taught at Wharton, UCLA, INSEAD, Rochester, and Yale.
           "We are extraordinarily grateful to Sandy and Joe Rotman for their tremendous support in advancing U of T's business school toward top-ten status," says Dean Roger Martin. "In addition to helping us attract and retain the finest minds in marketing, the establishment of the Manny Rotman chair ensures a permanent legacy of leading-edge research and teaching in one of the fastest-changing areas in business management."
           Martin adds that the establishment of the new chair is just one element in an overall revitalizing and repositioning of the marketing area at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management.

• In July, Nitin Mehta, from Carnegie Mellon University, joined the Rotman School as assistant professor of marketing. His research is in the statistical analysis of scanner data to understand consumer point of purchase behaviour and the effects of promotion on this behaviour
  
  
• In July 1998, Tarun Dewan, whose research focuses on promotional strategies for manufacturers and retailers in a channel of distribution, joined the Rotman School from the University of Texas at Dallas as assistant professor of Marketing
  
  
• For the 1999 school year, two new MBA streams in Marketing - e-commerce and brand management -- were introduced to prepare students for careers in these rapidly evolving fields
  
  
• Rotman MBA students placed first among teams from schools across Canada to win the 1999 Saturn Canada Business School Project, which challenges graduate business students to develop a national marketing campaign around one of Saturn's projects
  
  
• Rotman's Canadian Centre for Marketing Information Technology has substantially revised its vision to focus on Internet-based marketing, analyzing electronic data, and building decision-support systems for marketing managers
  
  
• Recent Rotman PhD graduates in Marketing have received job offers from Stanford, Northwestern, Wharton, MIT, INSEAD, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon University