The E-Finance Value Chain - E-Finance Lab Frankfurt am Main

PARTICIPATING UNIVERSITIES
Frankfurt University
PROF. DR. WERNER MÜLLER-ESTERL
President
Board Member, E-Finance Lab
Goethe University is Hesse’s largest and most distinguished university and the scientific center of
the Rhine-Main region. With its cosmopolitan and international atmosphere in one of Germany’s
most interesting and exciting cities, the university offers, both scientists and students alike, a
stimulating and attractive environment for teaching, research, studies and living. The variety of
academic fields offers excellent opportunities for gaining interdisciplinary experience.
As of 2008, Goethe University has been transformed into an endowed institution under public law
with a nationwide unique measure of autonomy. Having been founded in 1914 by the citizens of
Frankfurt, it is thus tieing up to its unique tradition as Germany‘s first endowed university which
attracted excellent scholars such as Paul Ehrlich, Max Dehn, Max von Laue, Otto Stern, Hugo
Sinzheim, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Erich Fromm.
At the same time, Goethe University is undergoing an enormous architectural reconstruction by
concentrating the sciences on the Riedberg Campus at the outskirts of Frankfurt and the humanities
on the Westend Campus. This campus with the unique Poelzig building is the new focal point
of the university in downtown Frankfurt. Within the next years, this process of concentration will be
completed, transforming the university into one of the most modern in Europe.
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Frankfurt University is sharpening its profile by intensifying connections to institutions and corporations
in the finance industry in the region which become manifest in quite a number of endowed
professorships and guest speakers. The “Institute for Law and Finance” (ILF) and the “Center for
Financial Studies” (CfS) are two examples of research, post-graduate education and know-how
transfer. The finance-related competences of the university are concentrated in the “House of
Finance” on the Westend Campus – including the E-Finance Lab. We are very proud to have these
distinguished industry partners supporting our work.
The E-Finance Lab is, in addition to other initiatives, an excellent example of the equally interdisciplined
and application-oriented research that characterizes the Department of Economics
and Business Administration at Frankfurt University. The dedication of professor Peter Gomber,
Andreas Hackethal, Wolfgang König, and Bernd Skiera underlines the need to combine finance
business and science for the sake of the international competitiveness of the city of Frankfurt and
the Rhine-Main region.