Robert W. Holthausen The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Robert W. Holthausen is the Nomura Securities Company Professor of Accounting and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He has been on the faculty there since 1989. He is also the Chair of the faculty advisory committee for Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS). Prior to 1989, he was on the accounting and finance faculty at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago for 10 years. Dr. Holthausen earned his doctorate at the University of Rochester, where he also earned his M.B.A. Prior to his academic career, Professor Holthausen worked as a C.P.A. for Price Waterhouse and as a financial analyst with Mobil.

His teaching has concentrated on the areas of investment management and valuation. Currently, his primary teaching responsibility is for the corporate valuation class he developed for Wharton, which he has taught for over 30 years. He has teaching experience at the undergraduate, M.B.A., and Ph.D. levels and has won teaching awards from both the undergraduate and M.B.A. programs at Wharton, including the David J. Hauck award for undergraduate teaching, awarded to one tenured faculty member per year. He has taught in many executive education programs at the Wharton School and is the academic director of Wharton’s Mergers and Acquisitions Executive Education program. Professor Holthausen is widely published in both finance and accounting journals. His research has studied the effects of management compensation and governance structures on firm performance, the effects of information on volume and prices, corporate restructuring and valuation, the effects of large block sales on common stock prices, and numerous other topics. His research has appeared in such journals as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial Economics. He was formerly an editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics. 

Professor Holthausen's consulting experiences are varied. In the past, he has consulted with numerous companies on such diverse activities as serving as a compensation consultant, advising investment companies on the development of fundamental trading rules used to manage equity portfolios, and performing valuation analysis in a variety of situations. He served on the Board of Directors at Charles River Associates for ten years and was chair of their Audit Committee.