Heitor Almeida is a professor of finance and Stanley C. and Joan J. Golder Distinguished Chair in Corporate Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his BA in Economics at UFMG at Belo Horizonte, MG, his Master in Economics at PUC-Rio at Rio de Janeiro, RJ, and his PhD in Economics at the University of Chicago. Before joining Illinois in 2007, Prof. Almeida was an associate professor of finance in the Stern School of Business at the New York University. He also served as the faculty research fellow (2005–2010) and continued to be a research associate (2010–present) in the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Almeida has also been an associate editor for the Review of Financial Studies, and is currently an associate editor for Management Science and the Journal of Financial Intermediation. His research interests include topics in corporate finance, such as liquidity management, capital structure, corporate ownership structure, and corporate governance. His research has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Financial Times and by prominent policy authorities such as the president of the European Central Bank. His research has received numerous awards such as the Journal of Finance’s Brattle Prize and the Jensen Prize of the Journal of Financial Economics, and has received more than 5,000 citations by other researchers. He teaches courses in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance for MBAs, executives and PhD students. He was awarded the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award for the College of Business in 2013 and Professor of the Year for the 2014 EMBA Class at UIUC.