Professor and Chair of Finance
Roles and Responsibilities
Background
Gbenga is a Professor and Chair of Finance at the University of Edinburgh, and as the Director for Industry, Economy and Society at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Futures Institute, he leads on strategic FinTech and Financial Services initiatives and convenes the FinTech and Financial Services Research Cluster at The University of Edinburgh. He was the Founding Director of both the University's PhD in Financial Technology programme and its flagship postgraduate taught FinTech programme, the MSc Finance, Technology and Policy (FTP). Gbenga is also the Deputy Scientific Director at the Fondazione European Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Pescara, Italy, a Fellow at the Rozetta Institute (formerly Capital Markets CRC) in Sydney, Australia, and a Member of the of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Resilient Financial Systems (2023-2024 term).
Gbenga is an expert on the Carbon Finance Unit of the World Bank's Partnership for Market Readiness Roster of Experts. He has been a Visiting Professor at various times at Macquarie University in Sydney, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Porto and China University of Petroleum, Beijing.
Gbenga holds an MBA (with distinction) and a PhD (in Market Microstructure) from the University of East Anglia, where he also held teaching and research positions with the Norwich Business School and the Environmental & Energy Finance Group respectively. He is a graduate of Nigeria's first institution of higher learning, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice from The University of Edinburgh.
Research Interests
Gbenga’s research interests cover the general financial economics space, with a core focus on the microstructure of financial markets. His current research examines the microstructure evolution of financial markets against the backdrop of technology and policy innovations. In addition, he investigates economic issues relating to trading in energy and environmental markets, such as the markets for crude oil and emissions financial instruments. The practical relevance of his research has led to his work being regularly discussed in leading international media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg, and his being commissioned to undertake research projects on behalf of financial services companies, policymakers and regulators. His commissioned reports have been published by the likes of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and the UK Houses of Parliament's All Party Parliamentary Corporate Governance Group. He has delivered scores of invited research keynotes and seminars in private/public sector fora and at universities/research and innovation institutes around the world, including at the UK Houses of Parliament, Financial Conduct Authority, Zhejiang University, Cardiff University, University of Otago Dunedin, University of Reading's ICMA Centre, Victoria University Wellington, University of South Australia Adelaide and Pan African University's Lagos Business School.
He is the author (with Andros Gregoriou) of 'Carbon Markets: Microstructure, Pricing & Policy', published in 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan, and has extensively authored or co-authored peer-reviewed research papers published in international journals in financial economics, including Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, as well as papers published in journals from other related fields, such as Journal of Marketing, Expert Systems with Applications and Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.
A full list of Gbenga's publications is available here: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/gbenga-ibikunle/publications/