Agricultural Finance: From Crops to Land, Water and Infrastructure

About the Author

Hélyette Geman is Director of the Commodity Finance Centre at Birkbeck, University of London and Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure in Mathematics and holds a Master's degree in Theoretical Physics as well as a PhD both in Probability from the University Pierre et Marie Curie and in Finance from the University Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Professor Geman has been a scientific advisor to major financial institutions, energy and mining and commodity companies for the last 21 years, covering the spectrum of interest rates, electricity, crude oil and natural gas, metals, and agriculturals, including fertilizers and land. She was for four years Head of Research at Caisse des Dépôts in Paris and has been a scientific advisor for Louis Dreyfus, EDF Trading, BHP Billiton, Bunge, Total, and many other commodity companies. Professor Geman has published more than 125 papers in top international finance journals. In 1994 she received the First Prize of the Merrill Lynch Awards for her work on exotic derivatives pricing and in 1995 the first AFIR (Actuarial Approach for Insurance Risk) prize for her work on catastrophic risk. She became in 1993 a Member of Honour of the French Society of Actuaries and was in 2000 the first President of the Bachelier Finance Society.

Professor Geman was named in the Hall of Fame of Energy Risk in 2004, and in 2008 she received the Alma Studiorum Prize of the University of Bologna for her contribution ...