RAJKAMAL VASU

Department of Finance Mailing Address:

C. T. Bauer College of Business 4750 Calhoun Rd.

University of Houston Room 220G

Email: rkv[email protected] Houston, TX 77204

Phone: (713) 743-4779

Website: https://www.bauer.uh.edu/rvasu

August 2018-Present

DOCTORAL STUDIES

Ph.D., Finance, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Dissertation: Essays on Mergers and Acquisitions

Committee Chairperson: Professor Michael Fishman

Date of Completion: June 2018

PREDOCTORAL STUDIES

M.S.: Finance, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 2015

Academic Associate of the Year Award, Indian School of Business, 2011

Among 20 shortlisted for the Aditya Birla Scholarship, IIM Lucknow, 2003

National Talent Search Scholarship, Government of India, 1994

District and State Merit Scholarships, 1994

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Among the top 10% of the class after first year, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, 1998

Among the top 1% of all candidates nationwide in the Joint Entrance Exam for admission to the

Indian Institutes of Technology, 1997

Among the top 1% of all candidates nationwide in Physics in the Indian Association of Physics

Rajkamal Vasu, Page 2

Teaching Assistant at Kellogg School of Management, 2014 – 2017, for the following courses:

Finance I , MBA Core, Fall 2014 – 2016, Winter 2015, 2017

Finance II: Corporate Finance, MBA Elective, Spring 2015

Accelerated Corporate Finance, MBA Elective, Fall 2015, 2017

Managerial Finance II, Executive MBA Core, Fall 2015, 2016

Applied Real Estate Finance and Investments, MBA Elective, Spring 2016, 2017

Teaching Assistant at Indian School of Business, 2010- 2011, for the following courses:

Research Assistant to the following Professors:

Konstantin Milbradt, Northwestern University, 2017

Michael Fishman , Northwestern University, 2016

Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Indian School of Business, 2011-2013

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Indian School of Business, 2010 - 2013

Academic Associate, Research Associate

Worked as a research assistant and teaching assistant in Finance

“Auctions or Negotiations? A Theory of How Firms are Sold”

Abstract: An owner of a firm is selling the firm. Potential buyers do not know how many other

potential buyers there are. Will the seller choose to sell the firm through bilateral negotiations or

through an auction? In equilibrium, if the seller observes the number of buyers before choosing

the mechanism, the choice can signal information and lower expected revenue. Broadly speaking,

the seller chooses an auction if the expected number of buyers is high and negotiations otherwise.

Empirical implications of the theory are (i) The revenue is higher if buyer valuations are less

volatile; (ii) More risk-averse sellers choose auctions more often; (iii) If the seller risk-aversion is

above (below) a threshold value, the average transaction price in auctions is greater (less) than

that in negotiations. Committing to a mechanism before seeing the number of buyers increases

effort is not observable, he has the option of not exerting effort and reporting any of the possible

values. Should the seller and buyer hire an advisor and what is the optimal contract that they

Rajkamal Vasu, Page 3

should sign with him? We find that the probabilities with which the buyer and seller hire their

advisors and the optimal contracts are determined simultaneously in equilibrium. Both contracts

depend on two variables- whether the transaction succeeds or not and, if it does, the value of the

transaction. The seller's optimal contract with his advisor is unique, but the buyer's optimal

contract can take a variety of forms. The compensation of the seller's advisor is monotonically

increasing in the transaction value. Neither advisor is paid if the transaction fails. In equilibrium,

both advisors exert effort, report truthfully and do not extract any information rents. However, the

first best is not obtained because the transaction can fail even though it is socially optimal.

“Product Market Relatedness, Antitrust and Merger Decisions”, with Kirti Sinha

Abstract: We study how merger decisions between public firms in the US are affected by the

similarity between the product markets of the acquirer and the potential target. The relation

between the likelihood of the merger and the product market similarity is non-monotonic, in the

shape of an inverted U. We offer two reasons for this finding. First, when the product markets are

very similar, there is a high chance that antitrust investigations will block the merger. We find

in Early Modern Europe”

Abstract: Capital lock-in is the legal feature of a modern corporation which prevents the equity

investors from forcing the firm to return their capital. Why did it emerge for the first time in the

Dutch East India Company before it did in England? To answer this question, I develop a model

in which equity investors choose the duration for which their capital is pledged to the firm. The

duration depends on three factors, namely the incentive of the managers to divert capital from the

firm, the uncertainty about the productivity of the technology used by the firm and the probability

of expropriation of capital by the state. I argue that capital lock-in was first adopted in the Dutch

East India Company because there was less uncertainty regarding the productivity of

intercontinental trade in the Netherlands compared to England. I show that the uncertainty about