Dr Thomas Kirchmaier - personal details

Dr Tom Kirchmaier is a Lecturer in Business Economics and Strategy at Manchester Business School and Fellow of the Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics. He also holds a PhD and MSc in Management from the LSE, and a MSc equivalent in Economics from the University of Regensburg, Germany.

Tom’s interests lie in understanding the drivers of firm performance in two particular areas:

Firstly, on corporate governance in financial and non-financial firms, and here specifically on corporate boards as the highest institution of the firm. Tom has built one of the most extensive global datasets currently available on corporate boards, and is now working on papers on Boards of Banks, Shareholder Empowerment and Bank Bailout, Female Boardroom Labour Market, CEO Turnover, as well as linking Education to Boardroom Access.

Secondly, he is interested in corporate restructuring, and here in particular in using unstructured information (Enterprise 2.0, Social Media) which Tom sees as the next managerial frontier. To this end, Tom is heading a research project with BMW on how to use and organise unstructured information in optimising an industrial scale supply chain; the first of its kind. The project has been featured in the Financial Times.

Tom's working papers can be found on SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=346392.

Tom has been the UK academic representative of the Foundation of German Business (Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft) from its inception in the UK 9 years ago until today. You can find out more information about the SDW and Tom's work there on the SDW's UK website: http://www.sdw-uk.de/

Tom’s passion for current affairs and ongoing debates in his research areas has made him a recurring feature on the world’s media like Sky News, ITV News at Ten, BBC, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Press (syndicated), Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Over the years, Tom has taught or advised companies and government bodies on questions ranging from small optimisation problems to major restructurings, policy issues, or acted as an independent arbitrator. The organisations include: Audi, AXA, BMW, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, European Commission (TACIS), and German Antitrust Authority.

Tom is featured in the 2012/13 MBA brochure.