Chris Higson

Dr Chris Higson has worked at London Business School since 1986. He was Chair of the Accounting faculty from 1994 to 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor of Accounting Practice. His areas of expertise are in financial statements, financial performance and valuation, taxation, governance and regulation. He serves as an expert witness in these areas. He comments on financial matters on television, radio and in the international press.

During his career Chris Higson has advised on financial performance in many of the world’s leading industrial and financial companies. He is a member of the oversight board of a UK investment company and has been involved in creating several new businesses, including a consultancy advising governments and financial institutions on the value of their information assets, and a media start-up. He has had several non-executive roles for the UK Government, as a member of the UK’s Industrial Development Advisory Board, the Regional Growth Fund panel, in the UK Green Investment Bank and the British Business Bank. He developed a doctrine for the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that combines best practice in social cost benefit analysis and private sector decision-making.

Chris Higson has written over a hundred papers, case studies and books. A number of papers discuss the financial performance of intangible assets, including Accounting for Brands; Valuing Information as an Asset; Accounting for Human Capital. Several articles, published in the FT and elsewhere, discussed the consequences of the financial crisis. Two influential papers, Valuing Internet Businesses and Did Enron’s Investors Fool Themselves? (2000 and 2001) predicted the end of the dot-com bubble and explained why dot-coms were overvalued at the time. His book, Financial Statements: economic analysis and interpretation (3rd ed,2016, Rivington), aimed at practitioners and business students, and explains the logic of accounting and the relationship between corporate performance measurement and strategy.