OLA BENGTSSON

I am an Assistant professor of finance at the College of Business at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to this appointment, I was on the faculty of the Johnson School at Cornell University. I hold MBA and PhD degrees in finance from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and an master of science degree from the Stockholm School of Economics. I am an affiliated with the Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), both located in Stockholm, Sweden.

My research focus is on how venture capitalists select, contract with and compensate entrepreneurs. I also study the contractual structure of PIPEs (i.e., private equity investments in public equity). I study these topics from the corporate finance lens, but my research is also closely related to law and economics, and entrepreneurship. My curriculum vitae includes a complete list of my completed and current research papers. Working papers can be downloaded from my SSRN page. Please click on the links to the right.

At UIUC I teach one elective course on venture capital to masters students and undergraduates, and one elective on mergers and acquisitions to masters students. At Cornell I taught three different electives in entrepreneurial finance. I was also faculty advisor to a student-run incubator that recruits about 40 MBA students each year help entrepreneurial companies to grow.

I was born and raised in Hassleholm, a small city located in scenic southern Sweden. Prior to my undergraduate studies, I attended a military language school ("Tolkskolan") in Sweden. I there studied human intelligence and the Russian language. I then worked for a year at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow (Russia). I have also studied mathematics at the Free University in Berlin (Germany). I am fluent in Swedish and English and have high proficiency in Russian and German.