Zacharias Sautner
SFI Senior Chair, Professor of Sustainable Finance, University of Zurich
Zacharias Sautner is Professor of Sustainable Finance at the University of Zurich. Before joining the faculty in Zurich, Professor Sautner held professorships at the University of Amsterdam and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. He is a research consultant on climate finance at the European Central Bank and a Director of the European Finance Association. His work has been published in top academic journals and he serves on several financial journals' editorial boards.
Expertise
Professor Sautner studies sustainable finance with a focus on climate change and biodiversity. His research highlights, for example, the importance of biodiversity risks for investors and whether investors demand a risk premium when investing in the stocks of companies with large negative biodiversity footprints. Understanding such questions is essential considering the increasing importance of biodiversity topics among investors, policymakers, and the wider public. Professor Sautner also examines the role of ESG-related disclosures, corporate climate lobbying, climate transition risks of banks, and whether ESG investing is primarily motivated by value or values considerations.
Expertise Fields
- Financial Institutions
- Independent Asset Managers
- Institutional Investors and Funds
- Rating Agencies
- Corporate Finance and Governance
- Bankruptcy and Liquidation
- Capital Budgeting and Investment Policy
- Corporate Governance and Managerial Compensation
- Financial Risk and Risk Management
- Financial Valuation
- Financing Policy and Capital Structure
- Mergers and Acquisitions
- Frontier Topics
- Sustainable Finance