The University Record, December 12, 1995
Frey Foundation brings banking/finance expert to Michigan
By Keith Decie
School of Business Administration
An endowed professorship established by the Frey Foundation at the Business School will go to Anjan Thakor, one of the country’s most prominent experts on banking strategy and regulation as well as on key aspects of finance. The new faculty post was established with a $1.2 million grant from the Foundation and will be known as the Edward J. Frey Professorship of Banking and Finance.
The new professorship makes a major contribution to building Michigan’s expertise in a vital area and is seen by the School as an important step in furthering the capabilities that have placed it in the top ranks of business schools, according to the School’s officials. Thakor’s appointment to the Frey Professorship will be recommended to the Regents.
“The University of Michigan played a large role in my father’s business career, and his affection for the University was ever-present,” says David Frey, vice chairman and trustee of the Frey Foundation. “Being able to honor him by helping further the Business School’s national prominence is gratifying and most appropriate.
“We are especially delighted that this chair has enabled Michigan to attract one of the country’s leading scholars and teachers in banking and finance, an industry my father helped shape. The Business School’s unusual commitment to teaching its students corporate citizenship also makes Michigan a particularly appropriate place for us to establish a professorship in my father’s name.”
Succeeding his father, John E. Frey (1880_1962), Edward J. Frey Sr. served for 31 years as chief executive officer of Union Bank and Trust Co. (now NBD) and also founded Foremost Insurance Company in Grand Rapids in 1952.
Thakor is currently chairman of the finance department at Indiana University’s School of Business, where he is the NBD Professor of Finance. He has expertise in banking policy, regulation, and strategy and also has emerged as a leading thinker in the area known as financial intermediationways of linking sources of capital with businesses and individuals in need of financing. Thakor is an editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation and recently co-authored a text book on bank management titled Contemporary Financial Intermediation. He is associate editor of four other academic journals and has published more than 50 articles in leading academic journals in finance and economics, as well as numerous other monographs and chapters in books.
“Prof. Thakor brings precisely the kind of accomplishment in research and teaching that was envisioned when this chair was established,” says Business School Dean B. Joseph White.
