January 21, 2014

The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) announced today that the 2013 WFE Award for Excellence will be awarded to Professor Robert C. Merton, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Professor Myron Scholes, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the late Fischer Black, former Director of the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs, in recognition of their development of the groundbreaking Black-Scholes Model in 1973.

The WFE Award for Excellence is presented annually in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the advancement of regulated exchange markets. The Award acknowledges innovation and advancement leading to greater understanding and better usage of the world's capital markets.

Professors Merton and Scholes were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1997 (Fischer Black died in 1995) for their work on the Black Scholes Model, which was created to determine the value of derivatives. "Black-Scholes" is widely considered to be one of the most important concepts in modern financial theory and continues to be used daily by traders and investors throughout the world.

The WFE Award for Excellence will be presented on October 29, 2013, during the WFE Annual Meeting in Mexico City, hosted by the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores. The WFE Annual Meeting is a forum for regulated financial exchanges and key capital market participants to join leaders in business and government in examining issues impacting global capital markets. Professor Merton will accept the award on behalf of both Professor Scholes, who is unable to attend, and the late Professor Black.

Professor Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Resident Scientist at Dimensional Holdings, Inc. where he is the creator of Managed DC, a global integrated retirement funding solution system. He was the George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University. Professor Merton is the author of the Continuous-Time Finance and a co-author of Cases in Financial Engineering: Applied Studies of Financial Innovation; The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective; Finance; and Financial Economics. He is past president of the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award from the International Association of Financial Engineers in 1993.

Professor Merton received a B.S. in Engineering Mathematics from Columbia University, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Scholes is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors of Sterling Stamos. Professor Scholes is currently a director of Dimensional Fund Advisors and American Century (Mountain View), mutual funds, as well as several other private companies. A former director of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he has consulted widely with financial institutions, corporations and exchanges and continues to lecture around the world. He is the former chairman of Platinum Grove Asset Management, which he founded. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Scholes is a member of the Econometric Society and served as President of the American Academy of Sciences in 1990. Professor Scholes earned a B.A. in Economics from McMaster University in 1961, a M.B.A. at the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1969.

Previous recipients of the WFE Award for Excellence:

  • (2012) Dr. Richard Sandor, chairman and CEO of Environmental Financial Products LLC (EFP), for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of regulated exchange markets.
  • (2011) Mervyn King, Chairman of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC), in recognition of his work in leading national commissions on corporate governance reform.
  • (2010) Bengt Ryden, former Chief Executive Officer of the Stockholmsbörsen, for his pioneering work in the demutualization of exchanges from membership organizations to shareholder based corporations.
  • (2009) Professor Robert A. Schwartz, Baruch College, for his innovative work in market structure.

ABOUT THE WFE:

The World Federation of Exchanges is the trade association for the operators of regulated financial exchanges. With 57 members from around the globe, the WFE develops and promotes standards in markets, supporting reform in the regulation of OTC derivatives markets, international cooperation and coordination among regulators. WFE exchanges are home to more than 45,000 listed companies.

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For more information, please contact:

Cally Billimore
Manager, Communications
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 7391 204 007
Twitter: @TheWFE