Clifford G. Holderness is Professor of Finance at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
Professor Holderness has research interests in corporate governance and corporate finance and a special research interest on the role of large-block shareholders in public corporations. The topics he has written on include the pricing of large blocks of stock, the role of large shareholders in public corporations around the world, and the protection of minority shareholders from oppression by large shareholders. He has published in leading scholarly journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Stanford Law Review.
Professor Holderness has been recognized repeatedly for excellence in research. In 1999 he won the Brattle Prize for the best paper in corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance. Three of his papers have been re-printed in collections of scholarly papers. Another paper was honored by the editors of the Journal of Financial Economics as an All Star Paper because of how often it has been cited by other researchers.
Professor Holderness has consulted on a variety of management projects and lawsuits addressing corporate governance, non-profit control of for-profit corporations, mergers, and the oppression of minority shareholders by large shareholders. Prior to becoming an academic, Professor Holderness was an attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Steptoe & Johnson where he worked on a range of regulatory and litigation issues.
Professor Holderness holds a M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and a J.D. and A.B. in Economics (with Honors and Distinction), both from Stanford University. In law school he was a member of the Editorial Board of the Stanford Law Review. Professor Holderness is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
