Bala Dharan

2012-2013 Academic Year

Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor in Corporate Finance Law

Research Interests

• Financial Analysis of Structured Financing Transactions and Derivatives
• Fair Value Accounting and its Impact on Financial Statements
• Effect of Financial Statement and Transaction Complexity on Stock Prices
• Stock Market's Use of Accounting Disclosures

Appointments

• Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor of Accounting
• J. Howard Creekmore Professor of Management Emeritus, Rice University
• Vice President, Charles River Associates
• Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor in Corporate Finance Law

Additional Information

Visiting Professor Dharan will teach the courses Introduction to Accounting and Corporate Financial Reports, and Pre-Term Quick Look at Corporate Finance and Accounting Concepts in the Fall 2012 Term. He will teach Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation in the Spring 2013 Term.

Biographical Statement

Bala Dharan is Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He is also a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management and a Vice President at Charles River Associates, a litigation consulting firm. He has been teaching at HLS since 2008. He has been a professor at Rice University and Northwestern University, and a visiting professor at MIT, Harvard Business School, and University of California, Berkeley. He has published widely in major accounting and finance journals, and is the co-author of four editions of textbooks. He has been invited three times to testify before U.S. Congress on financial reporting issues. Professor Dharan has extensive business and litigation consulting experience in financial reporting and disclosures, transaction analysis, finance, financial markets, and valuation. He has served as an expert in several commercial litigation matters. CPA; ABV (Accredited in Business Valuation); CFF (Certified in Financial Forensics); M.S. 1977 and Ph.D. 1981 in Accounting, Carnegie Mellon University; MBA 1975, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; B. Tech 1973 (Chemical Engineering), Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Representative Publications

• Batta, George, George Chacko & Bala Dharan. "A Liquidity-Based Explanation of Convertible Arbitrage Aplhas," The Journal of Fixed Income, 2010.
  
• Dharan, Bala. "Valuation Issues in the Coming Wave of Goodwill and Asset Impairments," 15 Business Valuation Update 1 (2009).
  
• Enron and Other Corporate Fiascos (Bala Dharan & Nancy Rapoport eds., Foundation Press 2009).
  
• Dharan, Bala. "Derivatives and Risk Management in the Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Electricity Industries", Energy Information Administration (2002).