Business school adopts new finance center
By Sam Eaton
Staff Reporter

A new finance center will allow students and faculty to utilize state-of-the-art research material and expand the finance department, Chancellor Michael Ferrari said Wednesday.

Ferrari announced the adoption of the new finance center, which will be a part of the M.J. Neeley School of Business, at the Executive Speaker Series breakfast at the Dee J. Kelly Alumni and Visitors Center.

The finance center will be called the Luther King Capital Management Center for the work that the firm has done with the business school over the past 10 years. The center will be in the business school.

Joe Lipscomb, a finance and real estate professor, will be the center’s first director.
Luther King Capital Management has worked with the business school not only through financial gifts, but also by giving students internships and allowing staff members to give investment presentations at TCU, according to the center’s mission statement.

The mission statement listed several ways toward advancement of the finance department, including supporting faculty research, sponsoring seminars and working toward a scholarship for top students.

Robert Lusch, dean of the business school, said he hoped the center would expand the reputation of the finance department and produce qualified graduates.

“Our plans are to develop a premier finance center by building on the strengths of our existing program, which includes our outstanding faculty and our student-managed Educational Investment Fund,” Lusch said. “We are positioning this center to be a vibrant source of research and resources for our students and the business community in Fort Worth and beyond.”

According to a press release, the center will provide opportunities that are only available at a few universities such as faculty access to the Wharton Research Data Service and the Bloomberg financial information service, two of the top catalogs in the industry.

Lipscomb said the new research capabilities would help the finance department gain prestige.

“We’ve put some resources behind our faculty and added to their research capabilities,” Lipscomb said. “We add to our local and national visibility with this center.”

He said the center would enable the finance department to pursue top faculty.

“What we’re going to do is help buy the very expensive data that faculty have to use to do research and to help the faculty become well known, primarily within academic circles,” Lipscomb said. “We have the resources to make our department competitive in terms of hiring and research grants for faculty because it’s a competitive world for top finance faculty.”

Sam Eaton
s.m.eaton@student.tcu.edu

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