Professor Ian Tonks

Professor of Finance

Ian Tonks has been Professor of Finance in the School of Management at the University of Bath since 2010, and is Head of the School’s Accounting and Finance Group.

He is a leading expert in the field of financial markets. His research focuses on pension economics; fund manager performance; directors’ trading; and market microstructure. He has published in leading finance and economics journals, and teaches across all areas of financial economics including asset pricing, corporate finance, market efficiency and performance measurement.

He was a programme director on the ESRC Financial Markets Centre at the London School of Economics in the 1990’s and produced a number of papers on stock price volatility, and market microstructure, identifying the motives behind trading volumes on the London Stock Exchange.

He was a founder member of the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at University of Bristol in 1997, and as part of the Centre’s research developed a research programme in pension economics, and the performance of pension fund managers. He is a leading authority on annuity markets and published a book on this topic (jointly with Edmund Cannon) in 2008.

From 2003-2008 he was director of Xfi Centre or Finance and Investment at the University of Exeter, responsible for all its teaching and research programmes. He has also held positions at the University of Bristol (Head of Acc/Fin Group 2001-2003), and the London School of Economics; University of British Columbia, Canada; Solvay Business School, Bruxelles; City University Business School; Ecole Nationale Des Ponts et Chaussees, Paris; and LSE Summer Schools at Moscow and St Petersburg.

In 2006/07 he was Senior Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, and in 2008/09 he was an ESRC Business Fellow at the Financial Services Authority. He is an associate member of the Financial Markets Group, Centre for Market and Public Organisation, Pensions Institute and Netspar. He has acted as a consultant to a number of commercial and regulatory organisations including the London Stock Exchange, the Competition Commission, and the Financial Services Authority, and has advised the Department of Work and Pensions, the Bank of England, and the House of Commons Select Committee on pensions.

Ian is a members of the ESRC Grants Assessment Panel, and a member of sub-panel 19 Business and Management for REF2014.