Olivier Scaillet

Olivier Scaillet is Professor of Finance and Statistics at the University of Geneva and Head of the Geneva Finance Research Institute at the University. Professor Scaillet is a regular speaker at leading conferences on finance and financial econometrics. His papers have been published in the top academic journals in these fields.

Expertise

Professor Scaillet is studying the gains that institutional investors could achieve by reallocating their portfolios away from bonds and stocks and toward more illiquid assets. Data covering nearly 20 years of asset prices reveals that, at the global market level, the reallocation of a fifth of a bond and stock portfolio to privately traded illiquid assets improves portfolio returns significantly. And that a strategy aiming to minimize volatility offers the highest returns. The main driver of these findings is the fact that illiquid assets, such as real estate and private equity, typically offer better returns than bonds and stocks and are negatively correlated with bonds. Professor Scaillet actively participates in SFI Knowledge Exchange activities that focus on the topics of cybercrime and cybersecurity, and portfolio diversification.