Franklin Allen (Imperial College London, UK) was the recipient of the FEBS Distinguished Scholar Award for 2016 for his outstanding contributions to finance research. Franklin Allen is the Executive Director of the Brevan Howard Centre and Professor of Finance and Economics at Imperial College London. He is on leave from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he is the Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Professor of Economics. He has been on the faculty there since 1980. He is Co-Director of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. He was formerly Vice Dean and Director of Wharton Doctoral Programs, Executive Editor of the Review of Financial Studies and is currently Managing Editor of the Review of Finance. He is a past President of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies, the Financial Intermediation Research Society and the Financial Management Association, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He received his doctorate from Oxford University. Dr. Allen's main areas of interest are corporate finance, asset pricing, financial innovation, comparative financial systems, and financial crises. He is a co-author with Richard Brealey and Stewart Myers of the eighth through eleventh editions of the textbook Principles of Corporate Finance.