Ben Sopranzetti
Professor and Vice Chair
Ben Sopranzetti, Ph.D. holds the title of the Rutgers Business School Dean’s Professor of Business. He is a professor of Finance at Rutgers University and the vice chair of the Department of Finance and Economics. He received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. He has over twenty-five years of international experience in valuing and negotiating the sale of business enterprises. Prof. Sopranzetti is widely respected as a master teacher and is the recipient of twenty-one awards for excellence in teaching. He is a founding member of the Rutgers University Teaching Excellence Center. In 2008, he was honored by BusinessWeek as one of their twenty-one “Favorite Professors” and in 2020 he was chosen by Poets & Quants as a top-fifty business professor in the world. He has published in the Journal of Business, Journal of Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science and Operations Management, and other well-respected academic journals. In addition, he is an associate editor of the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and a previous Director of the Eastern Finance Association.
Professor Sopranzetti serves on several corporate boards and is a highly regarded valuation advisor and consultant at numerous high-profile Wall Street investment banks, including Bank of America, Bank of China, Citibank, CFSB, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, UBS, and others. He is currently in the final editing stages of his book, Financial Forecasting and Valuation: A Handbook for Academics and Practitioners, for World Scientific Press. Professor Sopranzetti (known to his students as "Dr. Ben") is a legend at RBS for helping his students get jobs. In his time at Rutgers, he has leveraged his network to help place over 500 students on Wall Street and in financial services He was instrumental in developing the academic foundation of the successful Road to Wall Street program and is currently spearheading our new Road to Rutgers Diversity Initiative, which partners with NJ school systems to help improve both the diversity and preparedness of the students that apply to our programs.
Ben Sopranzetti has been a staple of the EMBA program since 2002. He is the RBS Dean’s Professor of Business, a Professor of Finance, and Vice Chair of the Department of Finance and Economics at Rutgers Business School. He received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. Professor Sopranzetti has over 25 years of international experience in building, valuing, and selling business enterprises. He is an expert in the area of Business Valuation, Investment Banking, Financial Strategy and Financial Negotiations. Professor Sopranzetti is widely respected as a master teacher and has an outstanding reputation for designing and delivering innovative programs for financial institutions and corporate clients. He is particularly well regarded for his cutting-edge work on valuation, mergers and acquisitions, cross-cultural negotiations and high-level executive training.
Dr. Sopranzetti is the recipient of eighteen awards for excellence in teaching. He is a founding member of the Rutgers University Teaching Excellence Center. In 2008, he was honored by BusinessWeek as one of their 21 "Favorite Professors." Professor Sopranzetti is the advisor for the Little Investment Bankers of Rutgers (LIBOR), and places 30-40 students per year in front office jobs on Wall Street. In the course of his career, he has been involved in the job placement of over 500 students.
He has published in the Journal of Business, Journal of Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Manufacturing, Service and & Operations Management, and other well-respected academic journals. In addition, he is an associate editor of the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and was a Director of the Eastern Finance Association. Professor Sopranzetti serves on several corporate boards and is a highly regarded valuation consultant and trainer at numerous Wall Street investment banks, including Bank of America, Bank of China, Citibank, CFSB, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, UBS, and others.
In 2000, he founded Innovative Financial Solutions, a boutique investment banking and advisory services firm in Beijing, China, where he served as a managing partner. He sourced, negotiated and closed 19 deals between $25MM and $500MM. In 2006, he was a co-founder of the BEST Institute (Business, Engineering, Science and Technology) at Rutgers University. BEST is an organization that identifies, values, and commercializes University intellectual property. Professor Sopranzetti’s role involved managing the economic and financial due diligence associated with the commercialization of the inventions, including all valuation and funding requirements. In 2009, BEST was incorporated into the Office for Technology Transfer. Since 2009, he has started four companies, and is currently a senior partner at Partners2Market, a high-powered valuation and advisory services company.
Ph.D., University of Illinois; Finance
M.S., Drexel University; Engineering Management
B.S., Rutgers University; Electrical Engineering
“Price Stabilization, Underpricing, and the Market for New Issues”, with Xiaoli Wang and Emilio Venezian, The Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, March 2006.
Name: Cheng, Gao
Graduation Date: 2021/October
Name: Zhou, Bo
Graduation Date: 2019/May
Name: Luong, Phat
Graduation Date: 2018/May
Thesis Title: Three Essays on Commodity Risk Management
Name: Imerman, Michael
Advisors: Chen, Ren-Raw and Sopranzetti
Graduation Date: 2011/May
Thesis Title: Structural Credit Risk Models in Banking with Applications to the Financial Crisis
Name: Vadim Mezrin
Proposal Defended: 2004/April
Proposal Title: Stochastic Calculus and Contingent Claim Valuation Model for Processes with Autocorrelated Increments
Name: Xiaolin Cheng
Proposal Defended: 2004/November
Proposal Title: Two Factor Asset Pricing Model of Credit Risk and Interest Rate
Name: Mark Moore
Graduation Date: 2002/January
Thesis Title: Intangible Asset Valuation using the Feltham-Ohlson Framework and Real Option Analysis: Theory and Empirical Evidence.
Name: Cangemi, Robert
Graduation Date: 2000/October
Thesis Title: An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Private Debt in Corporation Finance
Name: Pagano Michael
Graduation Date: 1999/January
Thesis Title: An Empirical Investigation of the Rationales for Risk-taking and Risk-management Behavior in the U.S. Banking Industry
Name: Li, Li
Graduation Date: 1998/May
Thesis Title: Alternative Models for Mutual Fund Performance Evaluation: Theory and Evidence
Name: Bo Liu
Proposal Defended: 2004/December
Proposal Title: Three Essays on Mutual Fund and Term Structure of Interest Rate
Name: Zhang, Jingfeng
Graduation Date: 2004/May
Thesis Title: An Empirical Test for the Theoretical Basis of the Size Factor in the Fama-French Three-Factor Framework
Name: Porter, Robert
Graduation Date: 2004/May
Thesis Title: Regulatory Risk Management in Commercial Banking: An Empirical Investigation of Agency Theory
Name:Yaxuan Qi
Graduation Date: 2007/May
Thesis Title: An Empirical Investigation of Consumption-based Asset Pricing Models Using Panel Data