Ruud. A. I. van Frederikslust, Associate Professor of Finance, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam

James S. Ang, Bank of America Eminent Scholar, Professor of Finance, College of Business, The Florida State University

Sudi Sudarsanam, Professor of Finance & Corporate Control, School of Management, Cranfield University

Ruud. A. I. van Frederikslust, Associate Professor of Finance, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He joined Rotterdam School of Management as Associate Professor of Finance 1984 from the Inter-University Graduate School of Management, The Netherlands, where he was Associate Professor of Finance. He is author of the work Predictability of Corporate Failure (Kluwer Academic Publishers). And editor in chief of the volume of collection: Mergers & Acquisitions (in Dutch) and of the volume Corporate Restructuring and Recovery (in Dutch) (Reed Elsevier LexisNexis). He has participated in the organizations of leading conferences in Europe and the USA and presented there also numerous research papers at the conferences. He has published in leading journals like the Multinational Finance Journal and the Journal of Financial Transformation. He was a member of the Board of the European Finance Association.

James S. Ang, Bank of America Eminent Scholar, Professor of Finance, College of Business, Florida State University. He joined the College of Business, of Florida State University as a Professor of Finance in 1998 from Barnett Bank Chair Professor of Finance, Florida State University. His main areas of research interest are amongst others, in corporate restructuring, corporate governance and control. He has published extensively in leading academic journals like Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, The Bell Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and The Review of Economics and Statistics. And he is a member (current and past) of the Editorial Board of several of these Journals. He is amongst others a member of the Board of Trustees of the Financial Management Association and formerly he was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Financial Management Association.

Sudi Sudarsanam, Professor of Finance & Corporate Control, School of Management, Cranfield University. He joined Cranfield as Professor of Finance and Corporate Control on the 1 January 2000 from City University Business School where he was Professor of Finance and Accounting. His original commercial background was in banking and international trade finance.

Sudi?s main areas of research interest are in corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy, adopting a multidisciplinary approach. He is one of the leading authorities on mergers and acquisitions in Europe and author of The Essence of Mergers and Acquisitions (Prentice Hall), translated into five European and Asian languages. His recent book, Creating value from mergers and acquisitions: the challenges, an international and integrated perspective (FT Prentice Hall, 2003, pp613) has been widely acclaimed by both academics and practitioners and is considered a standard work on M & A. He has been a visiting professor at US and European business schools. He has been an expert commentator on mergers and acquisitions on radio and television and in the print media.

Sudi has also published articles in top US and European journals on corporate restructuring, corporate governance and valuation of intellectual assets.