Dr. Gang Hu: Brief Biography and Obituary

Gang Hu was born on April 6, 1975, to a family of doctors and teachers in Yichang City, Hubei Province. In 1992, he was admitted to the system engineering major of Tianjin University with excellent grades. In 1995, he topped the entire department and won the "Centennial Anniversary, 100 top students" title at Tianjin University.

In 1996, Gang graduated from Tianjin University and received a full scholarship from the University of Pittsburgh to study for a doctorate degree in Management Science in the United States. In 1997, he transferred to the doctoral program at Boston College, this time majoring in finance. After two years, Gang took a break to work in industry: he worked at the trading group at Fidelity Investment Group during this period. During this period Gang also achieved a designation as a Certified Financial Analyst (CFA). He returned to the Boston College Doctoral program in Finance after two years in industry and completed his Ph. D, Dissertation, titled “Three Essays in Institutional Trading and Corporate Finance” under the guidance of his dissertation adviser, Professor Thomas Chemmanur of Boston College.

After he got his Ph.D.in Finance in 2005, Gang joined as an Assistant Professor of Finance at Babson College, Boston, serving there for approximately ten years. During this period, he published a number of very important papers in top journals in Finance. In 2009, he published a paper, “The Role of Institutional Investors in Seasoned Equity Offerings” (joint with his former dissertation adviser, Thomas Chemmanur of Boston College and Shan He of Louisiana State University) in the Journal of Financial Economics, one of three very top (“A” rated) journals in Finance. In 2010, he published another paper, “The Role of Institutional Investors in Initial Public Offerings” (joint with Thomas Chemmanur of Boston College and Jiekun Huang of the University of Illinois) in another one of the very top three finance journals, the Review of Financial Studies: this latter paper won numerous awards including the prestigious NASDAQ best paper award in Capital Formation at the Western Finance Association Annual Meetings (one of the top two conferences in the world) in 2008. This paper was also used by important agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to make policy on Initial Public Offerings in the U.S. In 2012 he published a third paper in a top three finance journal, again in the Review of Financial Studies, titled “The Year-End Trading Activities of Institutional Investors: Evidence from Daily Trades” (joint with David McLean, Jeffrey Pontiff, and Qinghai Wang). Gang Hu published numerous other papers (around 23 papers) in top finance journals in subsequent years. He was granted tenure at Babson College and promoted to Associate Professor of Finance in 2011. Gang published another important paper in 2015 in a top journal, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, titled “Institutional Trading and the Information Production Theory of Stock Splits” (joint with Thomas Chemmanur of Boston College and Jiekun Huang of the University of Illinois). Much of Gang’s research during period was on institutional trading and made use of the “Abel Noser” database which provides transaction-level data on trading by financial institutions: Gang was considered one of foremost experts on this research database in the world (and a top expert on institutional trading in general). He has published his research widely in academic journals, practitioner journals, and books, including Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Journal of Financial Research, Financial Analyst Journal, and a book chapter published by Brookings Institution. In addition to the Western Finance Association Annual Meetings, his research has won several other best paper awards at conferences such as the Eastern Finance Association, Asian Finance Association, World Accounting and Finance Conference, and Coller Institute of Ventures.

At the end of December 2014, Gang moved to Hong Kong from the United States and joined Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a tenured Associate Professor of Finance in the School of Accounting and Finance (AF) there. He continued a highly productive research career after joining Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2018, along with Professors Thomas Chemmanur of Boston College, Douglas Cumming of Florida Atlantic University (who was a Managing Editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance at the time), and K. C. John Wei of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Gang organized a conference on “The Role of Institutional Investors in Corporate and Entrepreneurial Finance” at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Selected papers from this conference were published in an issue of the Journal of Corporate Finance guest edited by Thomas Chemmanur, Gang Hu, and K. C. John Wei, and the three guest editors wrote and published an editorial for this special issue of the Journal of Corporate Finance in December 2020. It is a testimony of Gang’s recent research productivity that he had three articles published in the Journal of Corporate Finance in December 2020. Gang also served as an Executive Editor of China Accounting and Finance Review (CAFR) since the year 2015.

Gang passed away on the morning of Wednesday, August 25, in Hong Kong, He was a caring and kind person, and always willing to help others. He is survived by his wife, Helen Huang, and five year old son, Daniel Hu.