MIT-PhD Damages, Securities and Valuation Expert

Specialties & Experience of this Expert Witness

Additional Information

Dr. Kumar (PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan, CFA) has almost 20 years of experience in economic consulting and specializes in the application of economic and financial theory to questions arising in business disputes, securities/derivatives and corporate finance litigation. She has expertise in economic damages quantification, business valuation (including startups and companies across a variety of niche industries), securities and structured finance litigation. She is proficient in the use of sophisticated statistical modeling and econometric techniques, including event studies, analysis of options, swaps and other complex structured products. She has been engaged several times as a testifying expert in securities, valuation and damages-related matters, and as consulting expert in a wider range of litigation including tax and transfer pricing, financial antitrust, statistical sampling and wage and hour-related suits. She has issued expert reports and has participated in several intensive expert witness testimony training courses (including one-on-one deposition and trial coaching). Dr. Kumar’s work has contributed to several high-profile wins, including a multibillion-dollar hotel acquisition dispute in which she led teams supporting academic experts in their assessments of the post-transaction performance of the acquired hotels and the resultant decline in value. In other matters, she has led teams in the preparation of economic, financial, and statistical analyses through all stages of the litigation process – including deposition and trial testimony. In previous consulting roles, Dr. Kumar led cross-office teams in cases spanning securities class action, transfer pricing, M&A and business valuation-related matters, damages estimation in a variety of contexts, including trademark infringement, securities class actions and private equity disputes, and ERISA suits. She has supported industry experts in fields including sports and entertainment and fiduciary process, and academic experts in areas including corporate governance, assessment of inter-company transactions, class certification and market efficiency, securities lending, banking and solvency. Earlier in her career, in a U.S. government fraud investigation into a major credit rating agency after the 2008 financial crisis, she led a team that provided evidence that key inputs in the agency’s risk models inflated ratings of collateralized debt obligation (CDO) tranches, culminating in a multibillion-dollar settlement. Dr. Kumar has published articles on hedge fund performance persistence and the nature and impacts of high-frequency trading in multiple academic journals. She previously worked in the global technical strategy group of a major securities brokerage and financial advisory services firm, where she built an online tool to back-test complex trading strategies based on a selection of technical signals. Education • Ph.D., finance, MIT Sloan School of Management • B.Sc., mathematics and economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom