Board

The Australian Centre’s Director reports directly to the Centre’s Board, which is ultimately responsible for the governance and performance of the Centre. The Board comprises one representative from each of the founding members. Additional appointments to the Board have been made to represent new sponsoring members.

Board Members are:

Jeremy Duffield – Chairman, Australian Centre for Financial Studies

Jeremy Duffield retired as Chairman of Vanguard Investments Australia in December 2010 after a 30-year career at The Vanguard Group. He was the Managing Director and founder of Vanguard Investments Australia, which he established in Melbourne in 1996.

Jeremy joined The Vanguard Group in the United States in 1980 as Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer and was Senior Vice President of Planning and Development until moving back to Australia in 1996. Jeremy is widely admired for successfully transplanting Vanguard’s indexed investment products, its process and its culture to Australia and for making Australia a base for export of financial services into the Asia-Pacific region.

Jeremy is currently a member of the Australia Financial Centre Task Force. In November 2005, Jeremy was appointed to the Australian Government’s Financial Sector Advisory Council which brings together a range of financial market participants to facilitate the growth of a strong and competitive financial sector. He was also previously deputy chairman of the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) and served on the Advisory Board of the Financial Literacy Foundation. Jeremy’s great depth of experience in financial services as well as his vast industry and policy-maker connections has been invaluable to ACFS.

Syd Bone – Deputy Chairman, Australian Centre for Financial Studies

Syd Bone is Chief Executive officer of CP2, a leading global infrastructure investment manager.

Previously, Syd was the Chairman of ACFS, CEO of Victorian Funds Management Corporation, Australia, and Managing Director of the Asia-Pacific operations of Baring Asset Management, a member of the ING Group. Prior to that role, Mr Bone was a Principal at Towers Perrin where he worked for seventeen years, starting in Melbourne, then Hong Kong as Managing Director of Asia, and finally New York at Towers Perrin’s International Consulting Office. His roles at Towers Perrin included both actuarial and asset consulting.

Mr Bone holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with Honours from the University of Melbourne, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia.

Keryn Chalmers – Head of Department of Accounting and Finance, Monash University

Professor Keryn Chalmers is Head of Department of Accounting and Finance at Monash University. Professor Chalmers has been in academia since 1987 and prior to joining Monash in 2003, held positions at The University of Melbourne and Victoria University. During her academic career, Keryn has undertaken numerous administrative duties at the University, Faculty and Department level. Prior to joining academia, Keryn worked in government accounting positions.

Keryn’s expertise is in the Financial Accounting and Financial Reporting area, specifically in relation to Accounting Standards, Accounting Policy and Disclosure Choices of management and the economic consequences of regulation. She is an active researcher with numerous academic publications and national competitive grants.

Keryn is a Victorian Divisional Council member of CPA Australia and has been a member of their national education accreditation board, special considerations committee and examination policy advisory committee. She is a director and President-Elect of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ), board member of the Melbourne Centre for Financial Studies and a Senior Fellow of Finsia with her ten year contribution to the Institute recognised with a practitioner service award.

Research Interests

Financial accounting and financial reporting matters including: examining firms’ discretionary accounting policies, accounting valuation methods, and disclosure choices; the impact of accounting regulation on firm value; executive remuneration and corporate governance.

Bruce Grundy BCom (Hons) Qld, PhD Chic – Head of Department and Professor of Finance, The University of Melbourne

Bruce received his PhD in Finance from the University of Chicago and was previously a faculty member at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Bruce has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago, Macquarie University, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and Singapore management University. Bruce is the Managing Editor of the International Review of Financial Markets and a past Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and Accounting and Finance.

Bruce has published extensively on momentum trading strategies, option pricing, dividend policy, convertible bond pricing, rational expectations and value-at-risk. His current research interests include governance, the valuation and exercise of real options and the funds management industry. Bruce has consulted for investment banks, corporations, mutual funds and regulators in Australia and the US.

Research Interests

Momentum trading strategies; option pricing; corporate governance; the valuation and exercise of real options; the funds management industry; cost of capital.

Tony Naughton - Professor of Finance, RMIT University

Research Interests

At the core of my research is the behaviour of security prices. In recent years I have extended this interest into corporate governance explanations of firm performance and the stock returns of IPOs and trading strategies. Much of the empirical work I do relates to the emerging markets of Asia. I am involved in two major projects at present. The first examines the impact of recent stock market reforms in China and involves a team of researchers from the USA, New Zealand and Australia. The second is a project developing and testing a new instrument to examine behavioural biases in investor decision-making. The project involves a team of researchers from three other universities in Australia.

Russell Thomas - Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Finsia

Following a period of 4 months as Interim CEO of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia, the Board announced the appointment of Mr Russell Thomas as the new CEO and Managing Director. He commenced in this role on 16 May 2011.

“We are delighted to appoint Russell to the role of CEO”, said Finsia President, Malcolm McComas. “We met some outstanding candidates during the selection process, however, the powerful combination of Russell’s insight into the professional membership landscape and the execution capability he has already demonstrated as Interim CEO, made for a compelling appointment.”

Russell Thomas holds a Bachelor of Arts/Law from the University of Melbourne, and a Masters Degree in law and commerce from Sydney University and the University of New South Wales.

He joined the professional education department of the Securities Institute of Australia (SIA) in 2003. From 2006, he was Senior Manager and then Director, of the Policy and Public Affairs division. Prior to joining Finsia, Russell had several roles in legal publishing and professional education with LexisNexis.