Ryan Riordan

Ryan is a Distinguished Professor of Finance at Smith School of Business, Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Finance, founding Director of the Master of Financial Innovation and Technology, and a recent recipient of the Bank of Canada Governor’s Award. He studies the use of technology in financial markets, and more recently the role climate risks play in asset prices. He finds that carbon risk is an important component of asset prices and is large enough that it should not be ignored by asset managers. Some of his past research has also focused on high-frequency trading systems and the impact of these systems on the quality of financial markets; too much technology, or its misapplication, can result in markets that are unstable and expensive. Not enough technology can mean investors do not meet their investment targets. Ryan’s work has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Banking and Finance, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems. His work has won awards such as the Michael J. Brennan Award for the best paper published in the Review of Financial Studies, and the Philip Brown Prize for the best paper published using Sirca data. In 2015 Ryan was awarded a SSHRC grant and the Smith School of Business New Researcher and Research Excellence Awards. He has also worked extensively within the financial industry, with regulators, policy makers, and central banks.

Prior to joining Smith, Ryan was an assistant professor at University of Ontario Institute of Technology and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and his MBA from the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. Before embarking on an academic career, Ryan worked as a trader and risk manager at HSBC Trinkaus in Dusseldorf, Germany.