Rustam Abuzov

Education: B.Sc. and M.Sc., Higher School of Economics (Russia); Ph.D., Swiss Finance Institute and HEC Lausanne (Switzerland)

Rustam is an assistant professor at the Darden School of Business in the Finance area. His research interests lie in venture capital, private equity, and financial intermediation. His work has been presented at leading academic conferences, such as the American Finance Association, the SFS Cavalcade North America, and the European Finance Association, and has been featured in news outlets such as Institutional Investor and Canadian Investment Review.

At Darden, Rustam teaches "Financial Management and Policies." Before that, he taught courses in finance at HEC Lausanne, where he received a Ph.D. in Finance. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford GSB. Prior to his Ph.D. studies, Rustam worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young.

Working papers The Impact of Venture Capital Screening [ SSRN ]

I study the effect of limited attention on resource allocation by venture capitalists. Using engagement in the IPO process as a measure of distraction, I document that investments made by distracted venture capitalists into new portfolio companies tend to underperform. Such companies are 7% less likely to go public or become acquired, and also exhibit lower exit multiples. The adverse effect of the attention constraints is present only in the vicinity of the distracting IPO and manifests itself both for individual partners and venture capital funds. Overall, the results indicate that the scarcity of attention hypothesis holds in the context of deal sourcing and screening in venture capital, highlighting the presence of skill in the company selection process.

Presentations: SFS Cavalcade North America 2020, PERC Private Equity Research Symposium (Oxford, 2019), Annual Private Capital Research Conference (Montreux, 2019), KWC Conference on Entrepreneurial Finance (Lund, 2019), FMA (2019), U of Geneva, U of Lausanne

Media coverage: Institutional Investor, Canadian Investment Review

Do Banks Compete on Non-Price Terms? Evidence from Loan Covenants [ SSRN ] with Christoph Herpfer and Roberto Steri

We investigate the link between competition in credit markets and non-price loan terms, specifically financial covenants. We exploit regulation in the leveraged loan market as variation in banks' ability to offer covenant-lite loans. As regulated banks demand relatively more covenants, borrowers switch to unregulated lenders, or shadow banks, leading to a decline in aggregate banks' market share. Results are not driven by lower loan supply or changes in other loan terms, and reflect a relation between lax covenants and loan growth in the broader lending market. Our findings encourage regulators to internalize non-price competition between regulated and unregulated sectors.

Presentations: AFA 2021 (Chicago), EFA 2020 (Helsinki), MFA 2020 (Chicago), 8th Empirical Financial Intermediation (EFI) Workshop (2019), Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (2018), Central Bank of Ireland (2018), Emory (2018), GeorgiaTech (2018), U of Lausanne (2018)

• co-author

The Value of Privacy and the Choice of Limited Partners by Venture Capitalists with Will Gornall and Ilya Strebulaev

Presentations: Stanford PhD Seminar (2020)

Work in progress

The Economics of Venture Capital Funds with Will Gornall and Ilya Strebulaev

Discussions

Competition for Talent: The Impact of Venture Capital Flows on Incumbent Firms by Linghang Zeng (Babson College)

Board Dynamics over the Startup Life Cycle by Michael Ewens (Caltech) and Nadya Malenko (Michigan Ross)