Professor Ken Lee

DBA FCA CFA AITI FHEA

  • Professor in Accounting
  • Director of postgraduate taught programmes

Expertise sell-side analysts, financial analysis, valuation, structuration theory

Research groups and centres

Kenneth is a Professor in the Accounting and Finance research group of Loughborough Business school and the Director of Postgraduate Taught programmes. Prior to this he was an Associate Professorial Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science, for 5 years. He is a member of the Capital Markets Advisory Committee (CMAC), a body supported by the IFRS Foundation, which interprets proposed accounting changes from the perspective of capital market participants.

Before academia Kenneth was a Managing Director & Head of European Equity Research at Barclays Capital, where he worked for 8 years before leaving in August 2017 to take up a number of academic positions. He was also a Managing Director and a ranked accounting and valuation analyst at Citi Investment Research in London. During this time Kenneth published extensively on accounting and valuation topics for investors and was ranked in the top 3 in the Institutional Investor Survey over more than a continuous 10-year period.

Kenneth graduated from Trinity College Dublin/Dublin Institute of Technology with a degree in Management Science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a member of the Institute of Taxation, a CFA Charterholder and a fellow of the Higher Education Authority. He holds a doctorate from Aston Business School which focused on how analysts make stock recommendation decisions.

My research focuses on the market for information. In particular, how the various actors in equity markets interact and react as they carry out their core tasks and react to external developments (such as regulatory changes). I focus on key actor clusters including sell-side analysts, investor relations professionals and asset managers. My evidence is drawn from interviewing senior professionals in the field and drawing on theories from sociology to unearth themes that deepen our understanding of how these markets operate.

Ken is a member of the Capital Markets Accounting Committee (CMAC). The CMAC was created as a body that would be independent of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the IFRS Foundation, with the specific aim to provide the Board with regular input from the international community of users of financial statements.

Ken is a regular contributor in the professional community, including speaker engagements such as leading a session at the European Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts in November 2022 in Vienna or as a judge for the Investor Relations Society ‘IR Innovation’ awards in London. He has also acted as an accounting and valuation consultant for a range of asset managers and investment banks.