IN THIS ISSUE 
 Accounting Professor Appointed to IAASB
Two Longtime McCombs Faculty Pass Away
Allen Holt Joins McCombs Development Team

McCombs Accounting Professor Kinney Appointed to IAASB
William Kinney, longtime accounting professor and the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Regents Chair in Business at McCombs, has been appointed to serve on the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board for a three-year term. The board works to enhance the quality and uniformity of global auditing practices. Read the press release.

Accounting Lecturer Delivers BBA Commencement Address
McCombs graduated 232 of its best and brightest undergraduates Dec. 10 at the Frank Erwin Center. Speakers included Dean George Gau, accounting lecturer William O’Hara, former Accenture COO Stephan A. James, and marketing student Sara Melanie Bartlett. Read O’Hara’s speech.

Two Longtime McCombs Faculty Pass Away
Robert C. Solomon - Adjunct Professor of Management
Robert C. Solomon, professor of philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts and adjunct professor of management, passed away Jan. 2 while traveling in Europe. Since 1986, Solomon served the business school as a teaching resource for business ethics courses. He was the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor in Business and Philosophy and a Distinguished Teaching Professor. Read the obituary in the Austin-American Statesman.

Francis B. May - Professor of Statistics
Francis B. May, professor emeritus, passed away Jan. 12 at the age of 91. May received his BBA, MBA and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and joined the business school as an assistant professor of statistics in 1958. He served as chair of the Department of General Business (now IROM) from 1964 to 1968. Though he officially retired in 1986, May continued teaching statistics part time until 1993.

New Director of Annual Giving is Ready to Shake Some Hands
Allen Holt joined the Office of Resource Development in January as the new director of annual giving. A career fundraiser with more than 20 years of experience, Holt served most recently as assistant vice president of the Memorial Hermann Foundation in Houston. Originally from Mexia, Texas, Holt earned a BBA in marketing from Baylor in 1980 and went on to work in development for Baylor College of Medicine.
Get the full story.

Spring Exec Ed Course Will Help You Follow Market Changes
Texas Executive Education programs challenge your thinking and add value to your professional life. Coming up this spring: Responding to Market Dynamics, May 10-11. This program offers you a foundation for designing market-based strategy and provides a set of tools useful for the development of a path toward profitability that is synchronous with changes in the market. For complete course description and registration information please visit us online or call us at 800-409-3932

McCOMBS IN THE NEWS
Huang Research Discovers “Where to Put Your Extra Cash”
The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 23, 2006
Many grapple with deciding how to best invest their money. Research co-authored by Jennifer Huang, assistant professor of finance, suggests that some homeowners who make extra mortgage-principal payments could earn more by putting their money into retirement accounts. Her research found that at least 38 percent of households would have earned 11 cents to 17 cents more on the dollar by investing in 401(k)s instead of prepaying the mortgage. Those extra earnings would have resulted in additional annual savings of almost $400 per household. Get the full story.

Starks’ Research Helps to Understand “January Effect”
Smart Money, Nov. 16, 2006
There’s new evidence to support the strategy of using closed-end bond funds to make a quick New Year’s profit. Research co-authored by Laura Starks, chair of the Finance Department, showed conclusively that tax selling is behind this “January Effect.” Tracking the prices of closed-end municipal bond funds, Starks and her co-authors could tell whether changes were due to fundamentals or to investor behavior. Their findings, scheduled for publication next year in the Journal of Finance, are striking. The 168 funds in their sample returned an average of 2.21 percent each January between 1990 and 2000, versus just 0.19 percent, on average, in each of the other 11 months. Get the full story.

It’s Not What You Know But... 
U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 17, 2006
Why do some CEOs make so much more than others? Not necessarily because they’re better, argue Assistant Finance Professors Amir Barnea and Ilan Guedj in the working paper, “But, Mom, All the Other Kids Have One! CEO Compensation and Director Networks.” Examining data on the 1,500 largest public companies from 1996 to 2004, the authors found that the more “connected” a company’s board of directors—meaning the more its members served on other companies’ boards—the bigger the paycheck going to its CEO. Get the full story.

Attend the Third Annual Longhorn Business Forum
Thursday, March 1, 2007         City Place in Dallas
This half-day conference, the Texas Exes' largest networking event, offers both CLE and CPE credits and is a great opportunity for you to connect with other UT alumni. Scheduled speakers include Maxine Shapiro, internationally known motivational speaker, and Peter Elkind, co-author of “The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron.”
Please visit us online for more information and to register.

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