I am a Full Professor at the Department of Financial Management at IESE. BA and Master in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University. I received my doctorate from the University of Barcelona after several years at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.
My research focuses on corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and AI. I investigate how common ownership of institutional shareholders impacts the corporate decisions of the companies in their portfolios. I am interested in the role of shareholder activism in this age of universal ownership by large asset management firms. As well, I explore the impact of data and AI adoption on firm strategies.
My research has been published in the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Review of Finance, and Harvard Business Review among other academic journals, as well as in various media (Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, BBC). I have received several internationally recognized awards such as the Brattle Prize, and have presented my research at prestigious universities and leading conferences in finance (WFA, EFA, AFA, NBER, etc.).
I also have entrepreneurial (yes, product design and cold-call selling!) experience. I was part of the initial team of the largest digital data platform for academic research, Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS). WRDS is a business intelligence and data platform owned by The Wharton School. It currently serves more than 550 institutions around the world and has a network of more than half a million users. I joined at the start-up phase leading the platform design and strategic content decisions. Currently, I am leading the group’s international operations and business development in EMEA.
Since 2020, I serve as an independent board member at Banc Sabadell. Currently, I am the Chair of the Remuneration Committee – until Sept 2023 I chaired the Audit Committee. As of 2022, I serve as well on the board of the Consumer Finance unit of the bank.
In a prior life, I was a member of the Modern Pentathlon Spanish National Team competing internationally and dreaming of joining the Olympics. Alas, this discipline only became Olympic for women in Sydney – too late, by then I was stuck on the academic track.