Dr. Karl V. Lins is the Spencer Fox Eccles Chair in Banking and Professor of Finance at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah.  Karl researches primarily in the areas of international corporate governance, capital markets, and corporate sustainability, and presents his research at academic and practitioner conferences worldwide.  Karl has published his papers in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Financial Management, the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, the Review of Accounting Studies, and the Review of Asset Pricing Studies. His research on family firm performance during the financial crisis was awarded the Best Paper prize at the European Financial Association meeting in 2012, his work on the benefits of active management in emerging markets was given the Best Paper Award by the Review of Asset Pricing Studies in 2014, his paper documenting that higher corporate social responsibility ratings lessen debt costs during the financial crisis was awarded the Blackrock Prize for Best Paper at the 2015 Australasian Banking and Finance Conference, and his paper showing that firms with higher corporate social responsibility ratings performed better during the financial crisis was awarded the Standard Life Investments Finance Prize by the European Corporate Governance Institute in 2016.  In 2019, his paper on the importance of corporate governance and board renewal for improving firms’ environmental performance won the FMA Global Finance Conference in Latin America Best Paper Award.

Karl earned a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1985, an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000 where he was named the school’s Outstanding Doctoral Student.  He has done executive teaching for London Business School for more than fifteen years, and has also taught executive courses for INSEAD, Duisenberg School of Finance, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Southern Methodist University, the University of Utah, the OneMBA global program at EGADE in Monterrey, Mexico, and IBM Business Services in Mexico City.  His teaching has been honored with the Brady Superior Teaching Award and the ASUU Student’s Choice Teaching Award at the University of Utah, the Best Teacher Award at the Duisenberg School of Finance in Amsterdam, and a Ph.D. teaching award at the University of North Carolina.

Prior to starting his academic career, Karl worked as a petroleum engineer for Conoco Inc. and in corporate finance and international marketing positions for forest-products producer Boise Cascade Corporation.