Interview with Douglas T. Breeden--

Interview with Douglas T. Breeden(1)

2007-06-20 16:54:21 [ Big Normal Small ] Xing Zong 　Comment

(Douglas T. Breeden, Dean of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the William W. Priest Professor of Finance.(right) Zongxing, a 4th year Ph.D. student at Duke University (left))

About Dean Breeden

Douglas T. Breeden is the Dean of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the William W. Priest Professor of Finance. He has served on faculties at the University of Chicago, Stanford, Duke and North Carolina. Professor Breeden has published well-cited research on consumption and intertemporal asset pricing, as well as on mortgage securities and hedging.

He is the Founding Editor of The Journal of Fixed Income and was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Finance Association. He has served as Associate Editor of The Journal of Finance, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Journal of Financial Economics and The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.

He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from Stanford and a B.S. from M.I.T. He serves as a member of MIT Corporation's Visiting Committee for the Sloan School of Management and as a member of Stanford's Graduate School of Business Advisory Council.

He is the Chairman Emeritus and Co-founder of Smith Breeden Associates, a money management firm, as well as Chairman and principal owner of Community First Financial Group, a multi-bank holding company, and Old Capital Golf Course. He is active in philanthropic endeavours and in community development in his home area in Southern Indiana.

Recently, Xing Zong, a 4th year Ph.D. student at Duke University Physics Department had an exclusive interview with Dean Breeden.

Xing Zong: First off Dean Breeden, you have seen MBAs from a number of different angles—as a Ph.D. student, a junior-level faculty member, a top financial professor and co-founder of a money management firm. What is your vision of where management education should be heading to keep pace with business?

Breeden: I think MBA education is very valuable in financial careers. It should also be valuable in consulting and general business management. For example, in the money management business and banking business, we consider hiring undergraduate students, MBAs and PhDs. We do hire some of each, actually. What we have found is that, MBAs take courses on investment, venture capital, derivatives and fixed income, so they have very valuable knowledge that we need to have when we manage portfolios or securities.

In our case, banks make loans, and they think of the different option aspects of credit risk, venture risks, prepayment penalty and things like that. The students we have recruited have knowledge on how to value those risks properly. Our MBA students who have taken the finance elective courses are quite good at that. MBA is an excellent part of education. Even very bright undergraduate students who have not taken these courses, don't know about options, futures and hedging or how to price assets and liability properly. So that's very valuable.

Xing Zong: You have been in many top U.S. business schools: Chicago, Stanford, MIT, North Carolina and now Duke. What is the strength of Duke?

Breeden: The most unique thing is our "Team Fuqua" culture. That's one aspect. The highly related one is what we call a learning partnership. The learning partnership is about our students, faculty, and staff. They work together to produce a great education. We take advantage of the skills we have, I think it's the most cooperative environment I have ever seen in any school.

Duke is very like Stanford, in the sense that we both have balanced excellence. Good balanced teaching, research, theory, and application. So I think Duke is unique and better than the others in the sense of the cooperative environment here.

Xing Zong: Let's talk about MBA admissions. Who is the best candidate for Fuqua B-school MBA?

Breeden: In my own business, I always look for smart, hardworking and nice people. I think the same is true for our students in many ways. We look for students who are very smart, average GMAT 700 plus or minus. Too many students score high but we can't take all of them. Then we need to ask, which one demonstrates great leadership? We need someone who can make a positive impact on the world.

We also look for people who can work in teams, which is our theme. We want two plus two to equal five, so the dynamic interactions make an impact.

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