Bio
Vidhan Goyal is currently Chair Professor of Finance at the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has previously served as Head of the Department of Finance and as Academic Director of several of the school’s master programs including the MBA Program, the MSc Financial Analysis and Investment Management programs, and the Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA Program. Professor Goyal has previously served as the chair of the School Appointments and Substantiation Committee of the business school at HKUST. He has been a member of the University Appointments and Substantiation Committee and the University Senate.
Professor Goyal is an internationally known expert in the area of empirical corporate finance. His research interests are in capital structure, debt contracts, and financial development and growth. He has published numerous articles in the area of corporate finance in leading finance journals such as Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Law, Finance and Accounting, Financial Management, Journal of Business, and Journal of Financial Intermediation. He has received numerous research awards in conferences and journals including the prestigious Jensen Prize for Best Paper in Corporate Finance in the Journal of Financial Economics. Professor Goyal received the Citations of Excellence Award in 2013 given to the 50 most outstanding articles published by the top 300 management journals in the world.
Professor Goyal has won 12 teaching awards including the “Professor of the Year” award from the World’s #1 ranked Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program and the “Best MBA Core Teacher Award” from the school’s MBA program. He has won the “Franklin Prize for Teaching Excellence” multiple times during his tenure at HKUST. Professor Goyal is also the recipient of the “Michael Gale Medal for Distinguished Teaching”, the highest honor awarded to a single faculty in the university.
Professor Goyal has extensive experience in executive education and has developed innovative new programs in strategic financial management and value creation, creating value through financial decisions, valuation, and mergers and acquisitions. His clients include AstraZeneca, Daimler AG, EuroSuisse, Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels (Peninsula), Hong Kong Telecom, Medtronic, Merck KGaA, MTR Corporation, PwC, Sanofi Aventis, Shui On Group and Volkswagen AG.
Professor Goyal’s work on firms' debt policies has led to a collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), where his research has informed central bank governors of Asian countries on the structure of corporate liabilities of firms and the effect of global liquidity conditions on debt finance of companies. His research has been discussed at policy conferences attended by senior policymakers from Asia-Pacific.
Professor Goyal is a member of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association and the Beta Gamma Sigma, University of Pittsburgh Chapter. He received his MBA from the University of Delhi and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, earning the highest academic honours in both programs. At the University of Pittsburgh, he was a Research Fellow at the “Center for the Study of Contracts and the Structure of Enterprise”. Prior to his graduate work, Professor Goyal was the corporate treasurer of one of the largest financial services firm in India.