UNSW : Media

Australian export award for Banking and Finance Professor Michael Aitken
SMARTS, the company founded by Australian School of Business Banking and Finance Professor Michael Aitken, has been recognised as one of Australia’s leading exporters.

The company received the Australian Export Award 2009 in the Information and Communication Technology category (ICT) together with the NSW Premier’s award for Exporter of the Year.

SMARTS provides real time surveillance technology for securities markets to identify insider traders and market manipulators. The technology operates in over 40 global exchanges and regulators including the London Stock Exchange, HK Exchanges, the Swiss Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange.

Professor Aitken has fostered strong links between academic research and business, including scholarship programs that offer internships for students whilst they complete research degrees.

He was instrumental in establishing the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre (CMCRC), which is the largest market integrity research centre in the world.

“We develop, but more importantly deploy, first class research with the aim of making a difference in the respective professional areas in which we work.

“The CMCRC works in the area of fraud detection and brings together researchers in Information technology (in particular data management, mining and visualisation), focusing the tools at the intersection between finance, securities law and accounting,” said Professor Aitken.

“Aside from enhancing the integrity of the world securities markets, which will ultimately bring down the cost of trading, by the end of its second terms the CMCRC is aiming to create a research endowment in excess of $50m from which will come permanent funding for approximately 100 full-time PhD scholarships across four partner Universities,” he said.