TORONTO, November 30, 2000 -- Managing risk in the volatile world of capital markets is at the root of a new $3-million chair in derivatives and risk management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Made possible by a $1.5-million gift from Maple Financial Group, which was matched by the university, the Maple Financial Group Chair in Derivatives and Risk Management will enable the Rotman School to develop specialized courses and research to enhance the understanding of world capital markets and their products. It will also prepare students for careers in risk management, and derivatives trading, analysis and marketing.

The first chair holder will be Professor John Hull, Director of Rotman's Bonham Centre for Finance and winner of the 1999 IAFE international Financial Engineer of the Year Award. Hull is widely recognized for his work in stochastic volatility, numerical procedures, modelling of interest rates, market risk and credit risk. He and his Rotman collegue Alan White won the prestigious Nikko-LOR research competition for their groundbreaking development of the Hull-White Interest Rate Model - a model widely used by financial engineers to value nonstandard interest rate derivatives.

"The Rotman School has a proud history of excellence in finance teaching and research, and counts some of the world's leading experts among its faculty complement," says Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School. "Maple Financial Group's visionary gift will help ensure that we can continue to carry out cutting-edge research that will lead to new knowledge and perspectives in the field, as well as helping us produce a pool of skilled graduates who can lead businesses successfully in this new era of intense global competition."

"We're proud to partner with the Rotman School on this important initiative," says David Roffey, president and CEO of Maple Financial Group. "The Rotman School is the first business school in Canada to offer an MBA elective in this area, and has been at the forefront of derivatives and risk management education since the early 1980s. By creating this chair we hope to enhance understanding of the changing dynamics of world capital markets and help develop graduates in Canada with more refined skills in financial engineering and risk management."

The chair holder's research will focus on predicting capital market trends, developing new techniques for evaluating derivatives and their use in various areas such as corporate finance and investments. The chair holder will also educate the next generation of financial managers about the derivative transaction environment, providing the students with an understanding of the use of futures, swaps and options, and their associated risks.

"We are extraordinarily grateful to Maple Financial Group for this outstanding gift to the finance area," says Peter Pauly, Associate Dean, Research and Academic Resources. "We are also pleased to be able to offer this prestigious appointment to Professor John Hull, who has not only continued to be a world leader in research and publishing, but has also been a consistent winner of Outstanding Teacher Awards at U of T."

The gift will help keep the Bonham Centre at the forefront of finance education. In recent years, the Bonham Centre has benefited from the establishment of several new chairs in areas such as structured finance, investment strategy, capital markets and financial services, international finance, and asset management. As well, the school recently unveiled a state-of-the-art new financial research and trading laboratory to give students the experience of a real trading environment.

Maple Financial Group Inc., a financial services holding company, owns Maple Bank - the second largest foreign bank in Germany as measured by assets, with operations in Toronto, New York, London, Frankfurt, Milan and Amsterdam - and Maple Trust, the largest independent mortgage lender in Canada. Maple provides structured financial products to other financial institutions as a risk-reducing mechanism, and makes extensive use of financial derivatives - notably in the creation of market-neutral investment portfolios for its private banking clients.

The Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto provides academic programs and leading-edge research in all disciplines and fields of management. Cited among the top tier of business schools in the world By Business Week magazine, the school offers 11 undergraduate and graduate degrees and an innovative series of executive education programs tailored to the current needs of businesses and individual managers.

Jamie Harrison
U of T Public Affairs
(416) 978-7714
jamie.harrison@utoronto.ca

Kate Eccles
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
(416) 978-6991
eccles@rotman.utoronto.ca

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