Skip navigation Jump to main navigation

Applications for 2024 Columbia Summer Session programs are now open!

Close alert

H.S. Bob Kostakopoulos

Deputy Program Director and Part-Time Lecturer, Enterprise Risk Management

Bob Kostakopoulos is a 30+ year career banker with first-hand experience dealing with banking regulators. He is an expert in Regulatory Frameworks (Basel III, Dodd-Frank Act, BCBS/BIS) and traditional Enterprise Risk Management; and in managing silo risks such as strategic, financial (liquidity, credit, market, leverage), operational, systemic, economic, and global Governance. Specifically, the ERM process involves using regulatory and industry frameworks, including Governance, to manage risk: risk identification (including emergent threats and opportunities), quantification, integration, mitigation (risk-reward decision-making), and reporting to internal and external stakeholders.

Bob has served as:

President, CEO, and Director, Atlantic Bank of New York, a subsidiary bank of a Global Bank (National Bank of Greece); was also responsible for overseeing NBG's US intermediate holding company (IHC)'s Fed regulatory filings and overseeing NBG's operations and trading in the US and Canada. Bob served as President, CEO, and Director of a Community Bank (First Savings Bank of Little Falls). As a bank advisory firm co-founder, Bob orchestrated the last known modified conversion of a mutual banking organization to a stock company (First Savings Bank of Little Falls). Bob was a co-founder and investor and served as President & CEO, and Director of Fort Lee Federal Savings Bank. Bob was head of econometric modeling and database management at Merrill Lynch Economics, Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Group's research arm. His interests relate to measuring the impact of systemic risk due to financial interconnectedness - linkages of assets and liabilities across firms and industries:

  • Capital adequacy (Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review); Stress Tests.
  • Leverage, Liquidity, Market, Credit, Operational and Strategic risks.

He is also an expert in quantifying economic risk emanating from the global economy, Global governance risk, anti-competitive market practices, and federal fiscal and monetary policies of reserve-currency economies.

Kostakopoulos teaches Strategic Risk Management (course co-developer). Bob has taught these ERM Program courses: Traditional ERM Practices; Strategic Risk Management (course co-developer); Systemic Risk (online developer); Company Failures (co-developer); Cognitive Bias & ERM (contributor); Internship; Operational Risk Management (online course developer.)

Before joining the ERM Program, Kostakopoulos taught MBA courses in International Risk Analysis ("Washington Consensus"); Managerial Economics (industry structure, market power, anti-trust mitigations); Financial Strategy and Business Decisions under Uncertainty; Macroeconomics in a Global Economy (macroeconomic risk and Global Governance – UN Security Council); International Economics - Theory & Policy; Risk Management; Corporate Finance; and International Corporate Finance.

Kostakopoulos is fluent in Greek.

Kostakopoulos' current research can be found here.

Education

  • Ph.D., Columbia University
  • M.Phil., Columbia University
  • M.A., Columbia University
  • B.B.A., Pace University