The Executive MBA Program at the Ross School of Business is proud to welcome Reuven (Roby) Lehavy, Associate Professor of Accounting as its most recent faculty member. Professor Lehavy will be teaching the EMBA605 - Financial Statement Analysis course in the coming year and, while new to the EMBA program, is no stranger to the materials, having co-taught a similar course for the day MBA program during the past seven years.

Professor Lehavy comes to the EMBA program with a very distinguished resume that highlights an extensive amount of experience and knowledge in the field of accounting. He received his B.A. in Accounting and Economics from the University of Haifa, Israel in 1989 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Accounting and Information Systems from the Kellogg School of Graduate Management at Northwestern University in 1997.  Prior to joining the Ross School of Business, Professor Lehavy was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published numerous articles in leading accounting and finance journals and his research has been covered by the popular press including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the New York Times.

Dr. Lehavy’s interest in business accounting started at a very young age and was heavily influenced by his family, “my father was a partner at PWC so I was always around ‘numbers’.”  In addition to his love for “numbers” is the desire to teach others and to incorporate his research findings into classroom discussions and studies. “I enjoy the transfer of both theoretical and practical knowledge to the students and the immediate feedback received from them.  I also enjoy being able to combine my research findings in my teaching.” Favorite research topics include examinations of the characteristics and informativeness of financial analyst’s stock recommendations, price targets and earnings forecasts, the impact of recent regulations and litigations in the financial services industry on the characteristics of these measures, and the interaction between manager’s accounting decisions (including earnings management) and financial analysts’ earnings benchmarks. He has also done some recent work related to accounting choices by financially distressed firms. In particular, the adoption of Fresh Start Accounting by firms emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In this year’s upcoming EMBA605 class, Professor Lehavy hopes to help participants understand the importance of accounting in business success. In his words: “…accounting is the language of business. It’s critical for anyone in the business world to be able to read, understand, and assess accounting information. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of the severe consequences of failing to be able to understand financial statements.”  He is also hopeful that his students will take away from his class the ability to “…critically assess the quality and integrity of financial statements and successfully use the information in these statements in a variety of business decisions.”