MENACHEM BRENNER

Menachem Brenner — Keynote Speaker

Professor Menachem Brenner is Professor of Finance at the NYU Stern School of Business and Chair of the IRMC Scientific Committee. His primary research interests include derivative market structures, option pricing, inflation expectations, auctions, market efficiency, and liquidity.

His work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Business, Journal of Political Economy, and Journal of Monetary Economics. In 1986, together with Professor Dan Galai, he co-invented the first volatility index based on traded index options and introduced the concept of volatility derivatives—an innovation implemented globally two decades later. He has authored more than 60 scholarly articles across diverse areas of finance and economics.

Professor Brenner was a founding editor of the Review of Derivatives Research and has served on numerous editorial boards and program committees. He is a regular member of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics nominating committee and has received several research grants, the Graham & Dodd Award for excellence in financial writing, and Stern’s Glucksman Prize for best new research in finance.

At NYU Stern, he has taught the popular course on “Futures and Options,” supervised doctoral students, served as Deputy Chairman of the Finance Department, and currently directs the Master’s in Global Finance program, a joint venture between NYU Stern and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining Stern, he was a tenured faculty member at the Hebrew University and has held visiting appointments at Berkeley, the University of Bergamo, the University of Melbourne, and Tel Aviv University.

Beyond academia, Professor Brenner has been an advisor to the Bank of Israel and the Securities Authority of Israel, and served on the Board of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where he chaired the committee that recommended the establishment of Israel’s options market. He also has practical market experience as a former floor trader in options and futures at the NYFE and NYSE.