Professor Frank Partnoy

Before joining Berkeley Law in 2018, Frank Partnoy taught for twenty-one years at the University of San Diego, where he was the George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance and received the Thorsnes Prize for Excellence in Teaching three times. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, and has degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Kansas.

After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, in the Southern District of New York, and then worked as a derivatives structurer at Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston during the mid-1990s. He wrote F.I.A.S.C.O.: Blood in the Water on Wall Street, a best-selling book about his experiences there. He subsequently worked at Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C.

Since 1997, he has been a law professor at the University of San Diego. He has written more than two dozen scholarly articles published in academic journals includingThe University of Chicago Law Review, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Journal of Finance. He also is the co-author of a leading corporate law casebook.

His recent trade press books include WAIT: The Art and Science of Delay, Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets, and The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals, which was a finalist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year in 2009. He has written regularly for The New York Timesand the Financial Times, as well as The New York Review of Booksand The Atlantic. He has appeared on numerous media programs, including60 Minutes, The NewsHour, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Professor Partnoy also has testified as an expert before both houses of Congress, and has been a consultant to many major corporations, banks, pension funds, and hedge funds regarding various aspects of financial markets and regulation.