Professor Kevin Keasey

Profile

BA, MA & PhD (All Econ)

Academic

Kevin has spent his academic career focusing on the four pillars of Leadership, Research and PhD Supervision, Curriculum Development and Teaching.  In all of these activities he has been goal focused and achieved external recognition for his achievements.

Leadership

Since being appointed at the age of 33 to the Chair in Accounting and Finance (A&F) at the University of Leeds in 1989 (he was previously Reader in A&F at the University of Warwick), Kevin has been the head of the A&F department on a number of occasions, with more than 17 years of total service.  He finished his last term of office in 2017, at that time the A&F department achieved the unique position of being ranked Number 1 in all of the UK university league tables.

Between the periods of being Head, he founded the International Banking Institute (1997), the Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance (2005) and the Leeds Enterprise Centre (2009).

Research and PhD Supervision

13,107 Citations, 57 H-Index and 139 10 Index.

Kevin’s research career has had a number of overlapping phases, with notable external recognition.  The common thread throughout the phases is that he brings his training as an economist to a variety of topics.

He began his academic research career focusing on small firm finance and entrepreneurship, and in 1997 he was ranked joint 7^th globally for the most published articles in the top entrepreneurship and small firm journals (S. Shane, ‘Who is Publishing the Entrepreneurship Research?’, Journal of Management, vol. 23, pp 83-95).

The next phase involved a focus on a range of issues in market based accounting research and he was ranked 91 globally in 2009 for publications in the top 25 accounting journals (J. Heck, ‘Most Prolific Authors in the Accounting Literature over the Past Half Century: 1959-2008’, SSRN).

He then shifted his attention to the accounting and finance aspects of corporate governance with many articles and books.  His 1999 article on Institutional Ownership with Helen Short is still a top 20 all time cited article in the Journal of Corporate Finance (A. Andrikopoulos and G. Trichas, 2018, Publication Patterns and Co-Authorship in the Journal of Corporate Finance, 51, 108).

The final phase, to date, of his research interests has seen him investigate a number of issues in banking and financial services.  This has led to the publication of a number of articles in top ranked journals (see below).

Kevin’s breadth of research across his career has seen him ranked number 70 in the UK for Business and Management research and number 84 for Economics and Finance research (Research.Com – 2023).

The above research recognition is based on 14 books, etc. across a range of subjects and a large number of articles in leading international journals such as JAE, JFQA, JMCB, JCF, AOS, EJ, etc.  Recent selected articles include:

• ‘CEO Turnover in Large Banks: Does Tail Risk Matter?’, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2017, 64, 37-55, (with A. Srivastav, F. Vallascas and S. Mollah). 
• ‘Market Reaction to Earnings News: A Unified Test of Information Risk and Transaction Costs’, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2013, 56, 251-266, (with Q. Zhang and C. Cai). 
• ‘Analyst Coverage and Corporate Environmental Policies’ Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming, (with C. Jing, I. Lim  and B. Xu).
• ‘Market Development, Information Diffusion and the Global Anomaly Puzzle’, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming, (with L. Peng, C. Cai and Q. Zhang).
• ‘When Banks Grow Too Big for their National Economies: Tail Risks, Risk Channels and Government Guarantees’, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2018, 52, 5, 1-26, (with J. Hagendorff and F. Vallascas).

Alongside and part of his research career, he has supervised over 50 PhD students, many now occupying senior positions in academia and the corporate world. 

Finally, he has led a number of externally funded research projects with a value in excess of £3m.

Curriculum Development

Kevin has a long history of curriculum development and innovation.  In the early to the mid 1980s he was involved with developing some of earliest MBAs at the Universities of Newcastle and Nottingham.  This was followed by his involvement in the highly innovative Distance Learning and Far East MBAs at Warwick University. He took the lessons learned from this experience to jointly lead the development of the Executive and Singapore MBAs at the University of Leeds.  He jointly established Leeds University Management School to host these activities – this eventually became the foundation part of Leeds University Business School (LUBS).  He also initiated in the early 1990s the first taught MA programme in the School – the MA in Economics and Finance.  Working with other faculties he has since initiated other very successful and innovative taught MSc programmes – Mathematics and Finance, and Law and Finance.

In addition to the above, he developed a number of bespoke executive programmes for external organisations – the largest of which was the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Financial Sector Scheme for the former USSR (to the value of £4.5m in current terms).

Teaching

Given his background and research interests, it is not surprising Kevin has taught across the whole range of accounting, finance and banking subjects at all levels.  He brings a combination of academic knowledge and practical experience (see below) to his teaching. Students appreciate the balance of the academic and the practical, and he has been awarded the Dean’s prize for teaching on more than one occasion and is often nominated for teaching awards.  Recent comments (2023) in terms of nominations include:

Academic Personal Tutor/Supervisor

“I am nominating Kevin Keasey for an award in recognition of his exceptional performance as a lecturer in the "Banks and Banking Systems" module. Throughout the course, Kevin demonstrated outstanding professionalism and an unwavering commitment to his students. He was consistently engaging, cool, friendly, and informative, fostering a positive and supportive learning environment.”

Inspirational Teaching/Supervisor

“Kevin Keasey is a great lecturer, who fully engages his class every time he speaks. Highly respected by all of his students for his unparalleled knowledge, experience, and overall expertise. He has led a long a and very varied career, which shines through in his lectures, which are full of interesting anecdotes and stories.”

Professional

As well as establishing, leading and building academic units and programmes, Kevin has substantial and extensive experience as an entrepreneur (listed and private), a corporate director (Main and Aim listed) and a mentor to senior executives in the private and public sectors.  He has been actively involved in all parts of the corporate life cycle from many perspectives (running and being a director of companies, funding from private equity, sitting on the Northern Panel of the Stock Exchange, being a judge of Entrepreneur of the Year, etc.).

Responsibilities

• Director, International Banking Institute (IBI)
• Director, Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance (CASIF)

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance
• International Banking Institute

Current postgraduate researchers

• Mohammed Quotb