| March 19, 1999
Rotman School Announces Two Key Chair Appointments
The Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto has appointed two award-winning professors from within its own faculty as incumbents for recently-endowed chairs in strategic management and structured finance.
Professor Joel A.C. Baum, an expert in business strategy and organization, is the Canadian National Chair in Strategic Management and Professor Laurence Booth, a specialist in corporate finance, is the Newcourt Chair in Structured Finance. Both are the first to hold these chaired positions.
"These two chairs, made possible only through the generous support of Canadian National (CN) and Newcourt Credit Group, play a key role in moving the Rotman School toward our vision of becoming one of the top 10 business schools internationally," said Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman school.
"At a time of unprecedented demand for business expertise, the Rotman school is committed to expanding into new areas of research which we believe will be critical to enhancing Canada's competitive edge in the global market. Both professors Baum and Booth bring years of experience, knowledge and insight to their new positions and I am confident that under their leadership we will be able to provide the very best research to Canada's current and future business managers."
Baum is professor of strategy and organization at the Rotman school with a cross-appointment to U of T's department of sociology. He studies management and economics from a sociological point of view and is concerned with how institutions, inter-organizational relations and managers shape patterns of competition and cooperation among firms, organizational founding and failure, and industry evolution. He is currently working on two major research projects: one examining the rise of chain nursing homes in Ontario, and the other analyzing the effects of strategic alliances and intellectual property development on competition and firm performance in the Canadian biotechnology industry. He serves on the editorial board of Administrative Science Quarterly and is Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Strategic Management.
Booth has been a faculty member with the school of management since 1978 and professor of finance since 1987. Specializing in corporate financing, mergers and acquisitions and both domestic and international financial management, Booth's many research interests include capital market theory, micro-financial economics and the determination of corporate financing decisions. He has been called as an expert financial witness in numerous government hearings, and has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and visiting professor at China's Nankai University. Booth also sits on the editorial board of several prominent financial journals.
Newcourt Credit Group, through the Toronto Community Foundation, committed $1.5 million last November to a chair in structured finance at the Rotman school as part of $3.75 million donated to Toronto, York and Ryerson Polytechnical universities. CN recently announced its $1 million gift for a chair in strategic management. Both gifts were matched by the university to permanently endow the chairs.
CONTACT: Kate Eccles Roger L. Martin |