March 2021

Welcome from our Executive Director -  Professor Panagiotis Andrikopoulos

Over the last year, we have had to alter dramatically the way we work, communicate and carry out our daily routines and activities. We have seen universities closing their campuses, sending staff and students home while trying to be innovative, punctual and effective in the way they produce and deliver relevant teaching and research activities. Our centre, the CFCI, quickly adjusted to the emerging reality. If anything, in this last year we have seen a considerable upscaling of our research activities and experienced great success in our bidding efforts alongside new initiatives for research-enriched teaching and learning. CFCI’s research teams rose to the challenge proving right the famous saying by A. Einstein that “…in the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity”. Indeed, the current crisis gave us the space we needed to explore a whole new range of opportunities to upscale our efforts and achieve real growth and change. Well done to all our research staff for their effort. Everyone has played an important role to the CFCI’s achievements.

Before I elaborate more on our news, I would like to write a few words about the CFCI for the benefit of those not familiar with our activities. In brief, CFCI was established in December 2017 with the sole purpose of delivering theoretical and empirical research to resolve significant real-life problems such as the fair operation of financial markets; how organisations are governed (and trying to find a better way of doing it); individual and corporate compliance with financial laws and regulations; and, the wider responsibility of all firms to their stakeholders, and more importantly, to the wider society. Our research is both inter- and multi-disciplinary. Our research team comprise of specialists in the fields of economics, finance, accounting and law. As such, our aim is to deliver research that can resolve and interpret complex business and societal problems while having meaningful impact for policy makers and society.

Over the first 3 years of our operation, we have made a significant contribution to the research effort at Coventry University and the Faculty of Business and Law in particular. We have developed a rich and diverse research agenda aligned with our key strategic objective of becoming a leading research centre in the UK in important interrelated research fields such as: (i) financial/economic crime, and (ii) corporate integrity & ethical business practices. Since 2017 we have gone from strength to strength. Having started with an ambitious strategic plan, our original team of 13.4FTEs staff members have now grown to 22.2FTEs including 12 core staff at different levels (research fellows to full professors), 25 associate academic members, 30 early career researchers via the FBL’s ASPIRE programme and a vibrant community of 68 PGRs working across a wide range of theoretical and empirical research projects.

In terms of research metrics, CFCI has fully achieved all of its REF KPIs set in 2017. All staff are fully REFable with 3*/4* papers. On aggregate, over the period 2015-2020, we have published 199 research articles - 25% of which appear in the top-10% of journals in our field,[i] 47.7% are written with international collaborators and an overall field–weighted citation impact of 1.08 (1,310 citations in total). Similarly, our PGR community has more than doubled while we retained an outstanding PhD completion rate. Although small in size, CFCI’s performance in terms of income generation has been exceptional. Since our launch, we have won research bids in excess of £2.19m.[ii] Our most recent success (Feb.2021) is the three-year EU-funded research project called TRACE (€0.963m), led by Professor Umut Turksen. The research aims to develop tools and processes for EU Law Enforcement Agencies to counter illicit cross-border money trails associated with crime and terrorism. CFCI currently manages a large portfolio of exciting projects, details of which will be presented later in the newsletter.

Being a leading research centre in the area of Financial Crime opens a wide range of opportunities for dissemination and public engagement. Our research team produce a range of exciting courses that can promote research-enriched learning while at the same time engage both professional and academic audiences. For example, last January, we launched our new postgraduate certificate (PgC) in Fraud and Financial Crime delivered in collaboration with Cifas. This is a truly exciting initiative, as it gives us the opportunity to disseminate our ongoing research agenda to a wide range of professionals while, at the same time, allows us to work with the UK's leading fraud prevention service. We have also just developed a new MSc programme in the field of Sustainable Finance. This new endeavour will focus on the role of finance in promoting sustainable and socially-responsible business in the fight against climate change. All our finance research specialists are truly thrilled about this new initiative and look forward to the launch of the Programme.

This first edition of our Newsletter acts as a starting point for our semi-annual research updates. As such, it will provide an introduction to our research themes, our main staff and their activities. We will also provide a snapshot of some of our key research projects as well as the two key success drivers in the CFCI’s future: our ECRs, current members of the ASPiRE Programme, and our vibrant PhD community. Some key publications of our members and a list of future events including conferences, workshops and seminar series will be included here and subsequent Newsletters. I hope that you find the material contained in this Newsletter of great interest and that you will be encouraged to engage with CFCI. Our work in promoting responsible/accountable business practice for the benefit of the wider society is a never-ending endeavour. Share our vision and join our collegiate and dynamic research teams. 2021 looks to be an exciting, interesting and busy year for all of us as we will continue to focus on improving all our range of activities. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this 1st edition. Stay safe, well and look after each other.

[i] Source: SciVal (Accessed: 15/02/2021)

[ii] Direct bid value attributed to CFCI. Total value of bids (including partner institutions - coinvestigators) in excess of £7.57m 

Meet The Team

The Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity (CFCI) has a strong Research Team and support staff who are not only delivering impactful research affecting policy and governance of UK and international business, but also creating an exciting and innovative environment for Post Graduate Researchers and Early Career Researchers. You will find information here on our Core Staff, Associates, ASPiRE Fellows and Visiting Professors/Scholars with direct links to their PURE profiles to view their Research Interests, Publications and Activities. Click on the image above to find out more.

CFCI Themes

In CFCI we aim to bring expertise in finance, economics, corporate accountability and law together to provide an appropriate ‘hub’ to explore the synergetic and inter-disciplinary nature of such research problems. The aim of all our research themes is to create awareness and understanding of those issues to a wider audience including local businesses, multi-national corporations and other relevant stakeholders. For more information on our themes please click on relevant image below.

Finance and Governance (FG)

Professor Ahmed El-Masry, Theme Leader

"Our mission is to promote world-leading theoretical and empirical research in the area of finance and governance that supports and influences national and international organisations and their integrity in business dealings".

The Finance and Governance (FG) research theme aims to deliver world-leading research on the link between good corporate governance mechanisms and the promotion of integrity in the financial function of modern corporations and governmental institutions.

Core themes

• Corporate Finance and Governance (CFG)
• Financial Markets, Intermediation and Ethical Finance (FMIEF)                   

Click here for more details - Finance and Governance

Law, Risk and Compliance (LRC)

Professor Umut Turksen, Theme Leader

"Bridging the distance between law in books and law in action is what makes the difference between successfully addressing financial crimes or not".

LRC has a team of multi-disciplinary world leading experts on financial crime, transnational criminal law, and corporate governance. 

Accordingly, the aim of LRC theme is to develop high quality and impactful research which informs practice and seeks to co-create tested toolkits, inform future policy on countering financial crimes and improve compliance and integrity in the private sector.

Core themes:

• Countering Financial Crimes
• Corporate Taxation
• Corporate Integrity                         

Click here for more details - Law Risk and Compliance

Applied Economic Analysis and Policy (AEAP)

Dr Abay Mulatu, Theme Leader

"This is an eclectic group of (mainly) economists who work on a wide range of economic questions that are at the forefront of current policy debates".

The distinguishing feature of this CFCI research theme is the adoption of the economics lens and rigorous methods to examine these varied societal problems. The diversity of expertise of our members means that we often have the opportunity to approach research questions from a unique well-rounded perspective.                         

Core Themes

• The economics of armed conflict & political instability
• Trade/FDI and the environment
• Tourism economics & management
• Public healthcare financing                 

Click here for more details - Applied Economic Analysis and Policy

Project Spotlight - PROTAX

PROTAX provides solutions for the prevention and prosecution of tax crimes -. Researchers, law enforcement agencies and national tax authorities from several EU countries have joined the three-year, (ending in July 2021)  EU-funded PROTAX project (H2020) to generate policy guidelines and toolkits to harmonise the treatment of tax crime and enhance information sharing across different European jurisdictions.

Professor Umut Turksen (Principal Investigator), Dr Donato Vozza (Research Fellow) and Dr Adam Abukari (Research Fellow) from CFCI Core Team are working on the Project.

Project Update - Tax crimes substantially impact the budgets of European countries and create damage to society. Efficient criminal countermeasures can prevent and mitigate the impact of tax crimes, but the efforts of law enforcement agencies and tax authorities are hindered by various challenges. PROTAX has addressed these challenges and offered recommendations aimed at better detecting, preventing, investigating and mitigating tax crimes and their interconnection with corruption and other financial crimes. The project so far has developed three toolkits with practical application and impact:

A toolkit for policymakers, which provides recommendations and actions to counter tax crimes at national and EU level.
A toolkit for law enforcement agencies and tax authorities, which consists of a tax fraud investigation framework (TFIF) aimed at promoting new and harmonised methods for investigating tax crimes at national and EU level.
A toolkit including a tax crime risk assessment methodology (PRORAM), which is the methodology used by the Consortium to identify areas of gaps and vulnerabilities in the fight against tax crimes in the EU Member States.
Professor Umut Turksen describes that “This has been an invaluable project to lead so far: In addition to creating durable solutions to address existing problems in tax-eco-systems across Europe, we have also come across new challenges that need to tackled, which give us the impetus and direction of travel for future research”.

To find out more about the Project News, Project Partners, Project Outcomes and Project Publications please visit - Protax | (protax-project.eu)

Current Projects

VIRTEU: Vat fraud: Interdisciplinary Research on Tax crimes in the European Union (Grant Agreement no: 878619)

For Further Details please visit the VIRTEU project page - Click Here

Economic, Political and Security aspects of sanctions and blockades from a Target Country Perspective: Policy Lessons for Qatar and other Target Countries.

To find out more details Click Here

Upcoming Project - H2020 - TRACE

TRACE introduces a multi-disciplinary approach that targets the delivery of an on-line investigation analysis system to fight money-laundering by tracking illicit and suspicious money flows, provide intelligence analytics for network reconstruction, harmonise e-evidence standards and foster asset recovery.

TRACE will deliver a highly modular open source framework for money laundering investigations to Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), in standardized docker containers, which can be tailored according to and installed on premises of the LEAs. These will follow standards from previous projects so as to create a wide variety of different compatible software solutions that are (i) open to the available standards, (ii) easy to adapt; while (iii) making use of standard open source solutions to maximize the value and effectiveness to LEAs in addressing money laundering cases. 

For more information about the project please contact Prof Umut Turksen or Dr Donato Vozza

Upcoming Project - Transfer Pricing and Mispricing in Ethiopia: Investigation of Tax Law and Administration

The purpose of this research project is to study the governance of transfer pricing and detection of transfer mispricing in Ethiopia, and to investigate possibilities of tax law and administration reform to enable the Transfer Pricing Audit Process Unit of the Ministry of Revenue better tackle the problem. Transfer mispricing is an abusive practice of profit shifting from higher-tax to lower-tax jurisdictions undertaken between related multinational enterprises. The practice leads to the erosion of the tax base of countries. This problem of tax base erosion through transfer mispricing is a critical challenge faced by both developed and developing countries, as reflected in the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, however it has a disproportionate negative impact on the revenue of developing countries like Ethiopia.

For more information about the project please contact Nathanael Tilahun

Recent Publications

Financial Crime, Corruption and Government Policy

Corporate Finance and Governance

Behavioural Economics/ Finance and Decision Theory

Professors' Corner 

The idea of corporate governance is not new. Market failures such as financial market crises, are not new either. Yet, market failures occur under all sorts of legal and governance mechanisms. Of course, these failures have different degrees of severity. One could argue that market failure occurs because of inefficient distribution of goods and services; others argue that it is associated with excessive risk-taking.

Tightening up legal and governance mechanisms does not appear to substantially mitigate market failures, nor their severity. No particular legal or regulatory system appears to have a monopoly on avoiding market failure. Yet, some legal systems boast of their superior ability to enhance the financial environment for business dealings and economic growth. Irrespective of the legal system, the fallout from market failures imposes severe penalties on society.

In this inaugural lecture Nathan will provide an overview of some of the current issues relating to governance, regulation and market failure. He will review some of the thinking in the area and relate them to his research. He will question the extent to which market failures are preventable and whether there are alternatives to a system of regulation and governance that can reduce these adverse economic events or even their severity. Nathan acknowledges the role of regulatory institutions but takes issue with enforcement.

Professor Joseph received his PhD in Economics from Imperial College London. His previous position was International Treasury Analyst at the treasury function of NCR Corporation. He is also a qualified accountant (ACMA). Professor Joseph’s first academic post was Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at the University of Manchester. He was promoted to Reader of Finance shortly after becoming Senior Lecturer. He became a Professor of Finance at Aston University in 2007 and since 2013, has been Joint-editor of the British Accounting Review.

Meet the CFCI Core Professors

Responding to COVID-19

ASPiRE

PGR News

3-minute thesis (3MT) competition

We recently celebrated the successes of some PGRs from our community. We saw two PGRs in the winning line-up of the University wide 3-minute thesis (3MT) competition, namely:

Hillary Chindodo - CBiS - 2nd place
Mahmoud Masud - CFCI - 3rd place
Mahmoud Masud - CFCI - People’s Choice Winner 

Congratulations to them both and to the other two finalists:

Chiwuokem Nwoko, CBiS and Oluwatobiloba Oyefeso, CFCI 

It was an extremely competitive 3MT final with FBL accounting for 4 out the 10 finalists! Congratulations too, to FBL's PGR of the year nominee, Marsha Smith, CBiS.

All the contributions were outstanding. They did themselves, our Centres and the Faculty proud. Mahmoud Masud has provided a testimonial below:

I never realised how difficult it is to discuss a whole thesis in 3 minutes. I thought I was concise, but this tested all my skills at another level. I got so engaged that I was determined that I will make this worthwhile. I am pleased that I won the ‘People’s Choice Award’ and came third in ‘Judges Choice’. I thought this was the end. Was I wrong again? More significant benefits emerged after it was concluded. CFCI research centre colleagues were very proud of me, I represented the name of Research Centre, which was widely praised. Shortly after, I received an invitation to take part in a seminar series organised by CFCI and two additional invitations asking me to submit abstracts for conferences. This is not to forget the LinkedIn invites I received as a result. All this because of a three minutes competition. I cannot wait to take part in other ones, especially the PGR of the Year.’’

PGR Presentation Series

In December and February, we showcased the first two sessions of the PGR Presentation Series.  We have heard over 18 presentations from PGRs from across the Community. They presented such exciting, impactful real-world research to a high number of attendees from the staff and student population.  It was also very interesting to hear the many examples of how the community have adapted so well to the challenges of the COVID pandemic.

The final event in this series will take place on Tuesday 18th May 2021. Again, we are encouraging submissions from PGRs across all areas, and from different stages of research.  As before this is a great opportunity for our PGRs to present their research in front of an engaged audience and receive some constructive questions and informative feedback. 

Presentations will be limited to 15 mins, with 5 mins afterwards for questions.  

How to submit an expression of interest:

PGRs should email researchproservices.fbl@coventry.ac.uk  with the following information included:

• PGR Name, Centre/Unit affiliation (CBiS, CFCI, ICTE) and Year of Study
• Title of presentation – can be draft
• Brief Summary of presentation – no more than 200 words
• Details of supervisory team

Deadline Friday 30th April 2021

The CFCI PGR Community

CFCI have a vibrant community of 68 Postgraduate Researchers.  CFCI creates many opportunities for our PGR community. Some of our activities include 1) PGR Community Building Events: PGR Presentation Series 2)  CFCI Seminar Series: held at regular intervals (weekly or fortnightly) with guest presentations from existing members, international visiting researchers and invited speakers and 3) Specialised Research Workshops: specialised research workshops, e.g. quantitative research methodology and software skills.

Meet the PGR Community Development Team

The PGR Community Group is made up of students from across the Faculty PGR community and key members of the FBL PGR staff.   The primary purpose of this group is to support the official PGR Representative in collating the views of the whole FBL PGR community and to play a key role in further developing a supportive, collegiate community. For more information contact your PGR representative listed below:

ICTE – International Centre for Transformational Entrepreneurship, CFCI – Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity, CBiS - Centre for Business in Society       

Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA)

DBA Webinar

Friday 12th March at 11am - 12pm

The DBA Director, Dr Harjit Sekhon, will explain the practicalities of how the DBA qualification can be gained.

The event will be supported to two DBA participants who will discuss their experience of the DBA and how it has helped them in their day to day role.

Book your place by clicking on the register tab below:

Doctorate of Business Administration Webinar

International Conference in Techno-Auditing 2021

The Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity welcome registrations to the first International Conference in Techno-Auditing (ICTA2021), delivered in collaboration with ISACA, an international professional association focused on IT governance.

About the conference

The main focus of this conference is to understand how technology is shaping the future of the external audit profession.

Companies are evolving and improving their performance, efficiency and resilience by embracing new and emerging technologies. Developments in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big-data analytics are changing the way that business is conducted, with a particular influence on auditing, finance and accountancy. A growing impact of the information technology (IT) systems on internal fraud detection and prevention is shaping the audit profession.

The external audit industry is increasingly relying on the use of IT. A focus on information systems audit, and on the implementation of reliable, performing, secured systems for corporate data analytics is therefore essential.

Higher education (HE) and industry need to work together to develop essential required skills of future professionals, and to raise awareness on open challenges of auditing both in terms of research and public trust.

The event, which is free to attend, will take place from 28 June to 29 June 2021 and will be held online. Details of the conference timings will be announced sooner to the event.

Upcoming Research Seminars