Introduction to Derivatives and Risk Management

Don M. Chance, Ph.D., CFA, holds the Norman V. Kinsey Distinguished Chair in Finance at the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University. He previously held the James C. Flores Endowed Chair of MBA Studies and the William H. Wright, Jr. Endowed Chair for Financial Services at LSU and the First Union Professorship in Financial Risk Management at Virginia Tech. Prior to his academic career, he worked for a large southeastern bank. He has been a visiting scholar at universities in Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, Singapore, Scotland and in the U.S. He has authored four other books, "Essays in Derivatives: Risk Transfer Tools and Topics Made Easy" (2nd ed.), "Analysis of Derivatives for the CFA Program," "Financial Risk Management: An End User Perspective" and "Foundations of the Pricing of Financial Derivatives: Theory and Analysis," co-authored with Robert E. Brooks. He has extensive experience conducting professional training programs and serving as an expert witness through his LLC, Omega Risk Advisors. He has also been heavily involved in the derivatives and risk management curriculum in the CFA program, for which he was recognized with the C. Stewart Shepard Award. He is a member of LSU's Supplemental Retirement Plan Oversight Committee. He introduced the proposal to convert LSU's grading system to the Plus-Minus model and chaired the university's promotion and tenure committee for several years. Robert E. Brooks, Ph.D., CFA, is professor emeritus of finance at the University of Alabama and the President of Financial Risk Management, LLC, a financial risk management consulting firm. The author of numerous articles appearing in both academic and practitioner journals, Dr. Brooks has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg News and The Bond Buyer, as well as regional newspapers. He is the author of several books, including "Foundations of the Pricing of Financial Derivatives: Theory and Analysis," co-authored with Don Chance (Ph.D. level) and "Building Quantitative Finance Applications with R" (masters level material, freely available at www.robertebrooks.org). Dr. Brooks also has consulted with money managers, major public utilities, energy companies, auditing firms, corporations, investment bankers, elected municipal officials and commercial bankers. Further, Dr. Brooks serves as both a consulting as well as testifying expert in finance-related litigation (see www.frmhelp.com). In addition, Dr. Brooks conducts professional development seminars on various aspects of finance. He earned his B.S. in finance from Florida State University and his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Florida.