Proud to be BITSian Dr SPKothari Lecturing at BITS Pilani APOGEE 2009
One among the top ranking universities in India today, the Birla Institute of Technology and Science popularly known as BITS has campuses in Pilani Rajasthan, Dubai, Goa and Hyderabad. Recently the National Assessment and Accreditation Council NAAC reaccredited BITS with 3.71 CGPA out of 4 and awarded “A” grade “Very Good” status to BITS.
APOGEE stands for “A Professions Oriented Gathering over Educational Experience”. This TechFest of BITS Pilani which has ISO Certification has always been one among the top ranking Tech Fests of various T Schools in India today. APOGEE which saw its silver jubilee two years back is in its 27th year and is going on from 23 March to 27 March 2009.
Presently, Dr S.P. Kothari serves as Global Head of Equity Research and is responsible for research supporting Barclays Global Investors' active equity strategies. Prior to joining BGI, S.P. was Deputy Dean and Gordon Y Billard Professor in Management at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, he was the Head of the Department of Economics, Finance, and Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
In 2005-06, he was Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford Visiting Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Dr. Kothari received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and is an editor of the Journal of Accounting & Economics (1997-present)
He served on the Board of Directors of Vicarious Visions (www.vvisions.com)
On 25 March 2009, Dr SP Kothari delivered a lecture on the topic “Global Financial Crisis: Outlook and Steps for Recovery to the students of BITS Pilani who had assembled in the Lecture Theatre Complex of the Institute. Doing an anatomy and surgery on the topic, Dr Kothari explained the genesis of the crisis; the teamwork by banks, accountants, auditors, rating agencies, wall street as well as quasi government bodies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac etc to buildup the bubble which was ready and ripe to burst.
He was emphatic in stating that rise in interest rates triggered the bursting of the bubble which resulted in mortgage defaults and the ripple effects he chose to describe as a global tsunami resulted in the crisis all over.
Dr Kothari minced no words to convey that emerging economies like India and China will not escape the crisis as their exports will slow down due to recession in the developed world and more importantly FDI available to India and China will be lesser and lesser.
In his opinion, to engineer a recovery, merely throwing money at the economically disadvantaged is at best a temporary solution. For a long term solution he underlined the importance of improving the earning capacity and investing (spending with deficit financing).
It was an eye opener when Dr Kothari pointed out that promising excessive healthcare and retirement benefits however humane they might sound are impossible to meet in the long run or even the short and medium term. He also felt that excessive regulation and trade restrictions would only hurt further and not help in the long run. His lecture ended with an interesting set of questions put by the students and the brilliant replies by Dr SP Kothari.
Proud to be BITSian Dr SP Kothari did his B.E. (Hons) Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani during 1974 -1979 and with his career achievements is undoubtedly an ambassador for Brand BITS.
This year APOGEE with levitate as the theme has been floating higher and higher.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
