Prof. Dr. Zacharias Sautner

The power of capitalism can be used to address the most pressing issue of humanity, climate change.

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Zacharias is Professor of Sustainable Finance at University of Zurich and Senior Chair at the Swiss Finance Institute. He works on sustainable finance, ESG, climate finance, and biodiversity finance. Through his research, he provides insights on how finance can contribute to a more sustainable future. His research was downloaded more than 130,000 times on SSRN and cited more than 15,000 times according to Google Scholar.

His research was published in top journals, such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, or Journal of Financial Economics. His paper "Firm-level Climate Change Exposure" is the most cited paper published in the Journal of Finance in the past 5 years and his paper "The Importance of Climate Risks for Institutional Investors" (2021-2025) the second most cited paper published in the Review of Financial Studies over the past 5 years (2020-2024).

He is an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and an advisor of asset management companies on sustainable finance issues. He serves as a Director of the European Finance Association and on the judging panel for the PRI Awards. He was a Regular Research Visitor at the ECB, and a visiting professor at The University of Hong Kong, University of California San Diego, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, among others.

Before moving to Zurich, he was a Professor at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, where he headed the Department of Finance for several years.

At University of Zurich, Zacharias heads the Initiative in Sustainable Finance, one of the world's leading clusters for research on sustainable finance.