Ramesh K. S. Rao is the Eugene and Margaret McDermott Professor of Finance and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as Director of the McCombs Wealth Management Initiative. His research interests span asset pricing, informational asymmetry, and the interface between finance and marketing and between finance and operations management, complemented by extensive industry experience in bankruptcy, corporate restructuring, valuation, litigation, and executive education.

Dr. Rao’s teaching has been recognized with the Outstanding Professor Award, the Joe Beasley Award, the Jack G. Taylor Teaching Excellence Award, the Outstanding Professor Award in the Executive MBA Program, and The Excellence in Education Award at The University of Texas, which he has received twice. He also served as Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Director of the Texas MBA Program from 1997 to 1999.

Dr. Rao has consulted for organizations including the Federal Home Loan Banks, Intel Corporation, Burlington Northern, Deutsche Bank, and Fidelity Investments, and has served on the Boards of Directors of several companies. He has testified as an expert witness in the Federal Bankruptcy Courts, including as the sole valuation expert in the restructuring of First City Bancorporation, and as a valuation expert in VECO v. Department of Revenue, State of Alaska, American Express v. Visa et al. (antitrust), and Boon v. CIGNA (contract damages). He has also led seminars for IBM, Arthur Young, Chase Bank, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Phillips Petroleum, and Halliburton, and has participated in executive development programs in the U.S. and abroad.

Dr. Rao has published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Journal of Marketing, among others, and is the author of Financial Management: Concepts and Applications, A Theory of the Firm’s Cost of Capital (with E. Stevens), and Corporate Policies in a World with Informational Asymmetry (with V. Agrawal). He received his D.B.A. and M.B.A. from Indiana University and his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology.