Cass brings home the Onassis prize

City University’s Cass Business School, in London, and the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation have launched a $250,000 prize for a leading academic in the area of shipping, trade or finance.

The $250,000 Onassis Prize in Shipping, Trade and Finance, which will be awarded every two years, is intended to reward a lifetime of academic achievement in one of the three designated fields. The first Onassis Prize will be awarded in 2008 to an academic working in finance and will be presented at the Guild Hall in the City of London.

The judging panel are a selection of the great and the good, including two Nobel laureates, Robert Merton from Harvard and Myron Scholes from Stanford. The other judges are: Anthony Papadimitriou, president of the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation; George Constantinides, professor of finance at the University of Chicago graduate school of business; Charles Goodhart, professor emeritus at the London School of Economics; and Costas Grammenos, founding director of the Centre for Shipping, Trade and Finance at Cass Business School.

The Cass school’s Prof Grammenos, established the International Centre for Shipping, Trade and Finance in 1983 to develop postgraduate studies in those three areas. “There is a need to recognise lifetime achievements in these disciplines and as the City has been the principal international hub for shipping, trade and finance over the last three centuries, it is a fitting home for the Onassis Prize,” he says.

www.cass.city.ac.uk