Carol Alexander

Carol Alexander is Professor of Finance at Sussex and Co-Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance. Carol has been back at Sussex (her Alma Mater) since 2012. She was appointed the John von Neumann Chair at TU Munich for the year 2018 and in January 2019 she became visiting professor at the Oxford campus of Peking University Business School.

Prior academic appointments were as Chair of Financial Risk Management at the ICMA Centre in the Henley Business School at Reading (1999 – 2012) and lecturer in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Sussex (1985 - 1998). She holds degrees from the University of Sussex (BSc First Class, Mathematics with Experimental Psychology; PhD Algebraic Number Theory) and the London School of Economics (MSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics). She also has an Honorary Professorship at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania.

Carol has also held several positions in financial institutions: Fixed Income Trader at UBS/Phillips and Drew (UK); Academic Director of Algorithmics (Canada); Director of Nikko Global Holdings and Head of Market Risk Modeling (UK); Risk Research Advisor, SAS (USA). She also acts as an expert witness and consultant in financial modelling. From 2010 – 2012 Carol was Chair of the Board of PRMIA (Professional Risk Manager's International Association).

Throughout her corporate and academic careers Carol has designed and implemented mathematical models for pricing, trading, hedging and risk assessment for a wide range of asset management and investment banking clients, including some of the largest global exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, the Intercontinental Exchange and the FTX.US Exchange. She is the sole author of the best-selling textbook “Market Models” and of the four-volume textbook series Market Risk Analysis. Her latest textbook “Corruption and Fraud in Financial Markets” was edited with Douglas Cumming. In 2022 was votedas a top 10 Women Quants on Wall Street, the top 10 Quant Professors and the top 10 Crypto Voices, in polls conducted by Rebellion Research. Carol is a member of the Bachelier Prize Commitee, the Leverhulme Prize in Economics Committee, and she is on the Steering Committee for the Centre for Financial Industries at the Fields Institute and on various advisory committees for research councils and industry associations.

She publishes widely on a broad range of topics, including: volatility theory; option pricing and hedging; trading volatility; hedging with futures; alternative investments; random orthogonal matrix simulation; game theory and real options. She has written and edited numerous books in mathematics and finance and published extensively in top-ranked international journals. Her four-volume textbook on Market Risk Analysis (Wileys, 2008) is the definitive guide to the subject. Her latest interests focus on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies and her recent edited book (with Douglas Cumming, FAU -- Wileys, May 2020) has over 600 pages about Corruption and Fraud in Financial Markets.

Research Interests

Carol Alexander is an expert in Fintech, blockchain finance and cryptocurrency markets, indexing, derivatives, volatility trading, asset pricing, risk premia, investment strategies, risk management and portfolio management.

Teaching Interests

Carol teaches Financial Risk Management, Blockchains and Crypto Assets

Education

• Master of Science (MSc) The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (1983 — 1985)
• DPhil (same as PhD in old Sussex speak) University of Sussex (1976 — 1980)
• Bachelor of Science (BSc) University of Sussex (1973 — 1976)

Appointments

• 1977 – 1978 Editor, John Wiley (one year interim PhD research)
• 1981 – 1982 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Amsterdam
• 1982 – 1983 Bond Analyst, UBS Phillips and Drew, London
• 1983 – 1985 Teaching and Research Assistant, London School of Economics (part-time)
• 1985 – 1996 Lecturer in Mathematics and Economics, University of Sussex
• 1996 – 1998 Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Sussex (part-time)
• 1996 – 1998 Academic Director, Algorithmics Inc., London (part-time)
• 1998 Director, Head of Market Risk Modelling, Nikko Securities, London
• 1998 – 1999 Visiting Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• 1999 – 2012 Chair of Financial Risk Management, ICMA Centre, Henley Business School
• 2012 – now Professor of Finance, University of Sussex
• 2013 – 2015 Head of Business and Management (now University of Sussex Business School)
• 2019 – now Visiting Professor, Peking University