Lies, Bias, and ESG in the finance function – Prof Alex Edmans

Alex Edmans is a professor of Finance, non-executive director, author, and TED speaker. He is regularly interviewed and writes for WSJ, Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports. He was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

 In this episode we talk to Alex about his new book “May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About.  He is also a co-author of the classic text book,  “Principles of Corporate Finance” and top business book (his first book) Grow the Pie, How Great Companies Deliver both purpose and Profit. His Ted Talk on what to trust in a post truth world has alone been viewed nearly 2m time.

So many thought-provoking takeaways for anyone in FP&A! 

• Leaving Morgan Stanley to become a professor of finance
• Why I give Ted Talks rather than just publishing research 
• How CFOs and FP&A leaders can think about purpose 
• Is ESG a tick-box exercise for finance?
• How FP&A and finance leaders can check their biases 
• How you can control your addiction to bias
• Silicon Valley Bank and why financial models were affected by bias 

Follow Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aedmans/

Links to Alex’s new book:

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases―And What We Can Do about

TED: What to trust in a “post-truth” world