$300-fucking-million dollars. A gift. Holy shit. Look for GSB -
oops - BSB - to be #1 very shortly. They can now afford it.
Fuuuuuuck.
---------
To all our Alumni, Students, Faculty, Staff, and Friends:
I am pleased to communicate that earlier today we announced that, with
the sustaining support of the largest gift to any business school in
history and the largest gift to our University, we took the momentous
step of naming our school:
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
This decision, ratified by the Trustees with my full personal support,
affirms without qualification what we stand for and responds
dramatically to our highest aspiration to be the best business school
in the world and be recognized as such.
The gift from David Booth ('71), Suzanne Booth and their family is a
combination of an upfront payment and, fittingly, an economic interest
in the Dimensional Fund Advisors, the company that David and fellow
alum Rex Sinquefield ('72) co-founded in 1981. This combination of
support is valued at $300M.
David Booth started out as a doctoral student of Gene Fama, the most
cited financial economist in the world. But rather than continue with
the plan to return to his home state of Kansas for an academic career,
he decided to apply his training to the real world. After founding
DFA, David leveraged his Chicago education and the on-going flow of
ideas from the GSB to develop strategies for DFA that were grounded in
the efficient markets hypothesis but that also allowed DFA to
out-perform other so-called passive investment funds. As the
conceptualist and philosophical leader of DFA over the last 27 years,
David has sought out cutting-edge ideas of Chicago faculty, especially
Gene Fama and Gene's long-time collaborator Ken French, but also
others, including Merton Miller, Myron Scholes, Abbie Smith, George
Constantinides, Jack Gould, and Jim Lorie.
But make no mistake: David Booth did more than translate academic
journals. He is an extraordinary business leader with entrepreneurial
vision. Those close to him have recognized his ability to market
cutting-edge ideas in the fiercest of competitive environments and his
uniqueness as a financial thought leader in particular his ability to
leverage new ideas to meet the needs of investors. As a result, DFA
has done what no other investment fund has done, i.e., remain true to
the core idea that equity markets should be evaluated in terms of
equilibria characterized by efficiency in the practical sense and yet
find ways to consistently out-perform relevant indices over long
periods of time.
Putting aside that the Booth naming gift is orders of magnitude larger
than all other gifts to business schools, it comes at the right time
in our history. The unrestricted support from David and Suzanne Booth
and their family will help ensure that we build the best faculty in
the world, now and in the future, and that we will have the
flexibility to lead and be bold. We will become a yet stronger
business force.
The Booth gift, an extraordinary expression of support given the
current turmoil in the world's financial system, will move us
significantly toward our goal of being among the top three business
schools in terms of resources. Will it get us there by itself? No.
But it is a huge step toward that objective and, provided that we keep
both our overall aspiration and this particular objective in mind, we
can accelerate our progress.
We look forward to the opportunity to use the naming of the school to
address the uneven nature of our brand name capital. Some in our
community will miss referring to "the GSB", but the fact is that we
could never establish such a generic term "Graduate School of
Business" as our identity. We will of course maintain Chicago as a
component of our identity given our place within the university. But
we will now go forward with a new name in which we can build an
identity that has no limitations. In sum, the Booth gift provides
Chicago Booth with a perfectly-timed opportunity to move aggressively
forward, capitalize on our current momentum, and compete more
effectively against schools with greater resources, both in terms of
financial and brand name capital.
In closing, I am struck by the uniqueness of David and Suzanne's
intentions. Other naming gifts were intended to establish a business
school, shore up a problem, or fundamentally change a school. By
contrast, this gift affirms who we are, encourages us to move further
on our path, and to be guided by Chicago values. Rather than offer a
new design or definition for our school, the Booths simply offer this
stunning level of unrestricted support for what we are and to convey
in most dramatic terms their wish that we become yet more. For this
we are grateful beyond what words can express.
My hopes and those of my colleagues are no different than before. We
want our terrific students to experience Chicago values. We want our
faculty the best in the world to have freedom to do great work. We
want our diverse and renowned alumni to continue to lead in all
sectors, in all functions, and in all parts of the globe. We want our
superlative staff to be fully engaged in this special enterprise.
Our two-part strategy will remain the same (1) strengthen our values
the values that we share with the University of Chicago, and (2) get
yet better aligned around relationships that matter. Our intentions
will remain the same. We will maintain the integrity of our school
and work hard so that many talented people will want to join what will
be henceforth the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
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