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Biography

Christopher Kobrak is a professor of finance at ESCP Europe. He is responsible for the English track major in finance taught in Paris and London. He holds the following degrees: BA from Rutgers University in philosophy, MBA (Finance and Accounting) and Ph.D. (Business History) from Columbia University in New York, and a post-doctoral Habilitation in Management from the University of Toulouse.
Professor Kobrak held many positions in business, notably senior accountant at Peat, Marwick Mitchell (KPMG), and Treasury Director Europe and Africa, Vice President of Japanese operations, and Vice President of Finance Strategic Resources Ethical Medicines all at Sterling Drug Inc.
He has been a professor at ESCP Europe since 1991. His main areas of teaching include international finance, financial theory, especially corporate governance, and business and financial history.
His research has concentrated on corporate and financial history, which includes how the evolution of capital markets and political risk has affected business strategies. His special interest is in the interface between history and management, especially how politics and economic events have helped shape corporate forms, international investment decisions, and governance structures.

Current research

Professor Kobrak’s current projects fall into two broad categories.

First, building on his recent book about Deutsche Bank’s business in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2007), he is developing a series of papers on the role of banks in corporate governance.  These papers include several with Jeff Fear on the role of banks in pre-World War I Germany’s and America’s financial systems, one on the evolution of family international banking, and one on how American capital markets came of age during the panics of the 1890s.

The second involves how political risk has shaped corporate investment strategies and ethical decisions.  With Jana Wüstenhagen of Martin-Luther-University, Germany, with whom he has published on German investment strategies between the wars, he is writing on how American policies toward German property after World War II affected German investment in the United States.  This is designed as a starting point for a larger work on the history of political risk.  Along similar lines, with Christopher McKenna of the Said Business School, Oxford University, he is also writing about how business history can be used to teach business ethics.

Publications