Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi is an assistant professor in the Accounting and Management unit, where he teaches the Financial Reporting and Control course in the MBA required curriculum. His research is directed at information disclosure, debt contracting, and credit risks associated with firm operations and organizational forms.
Professor Sikochi earned his PhD in business administration at the Penn State Smeal College of Business, where he taught financial accounting in the Executive MBA program. He previously received an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Before his graduate studies, Professor Sikochi worked at a branch of FTI Consulting and at Charles River Associates.
A native of Zimbabwe, Professor Sikochi came to the United States to attend Middlebury College, graduating with majors in economics and Russian. He is active in the EducationUSA United States Student Achievers Program, which helped him prepare for U.S. higher education. He is also engaged in the PhD Project, an organization with a mission to increase the diversity of U.S. business school faculty. He and his wife are parents of three children.
On August 7, 2018 Elon Musk, Chairman and CEO of Tesla tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured funding. Weeks went by without details about a deal and speculation grew that Musk had misled investors. He soon abandoned the idea, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged him with violating securities laws by either knowingly or recklessly misleading investors. The lawsuit was settled with Musk agreeing to step down as Tesla chairman for three years while remaining as a director on the board and CEO. On November 7, 2018, Tesla announced the appointment of Robyn Denholm as Chair of the Tesla Board. Observers were cautiously optimistic that an independent chairman could ease longstanding governance concerns. Ms. Denholm was regarded as a good choice, but details about her role remained unclear and the jury was still out on her independence from Musk.
Nicky Newton-King, the Chief Executive Officer of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), was put in a difficult position. A scandal had broken out at Steinhoff, a JSE-listed company, under her watch and there were calls to suspend listing of the company securities from the exchange. Newton-King understood that the scandal threatened to erode investor confidence in the credibility of South Africa’s capital markets, at a time when South Africa was already experiencing political and economic uncertainties. Yet, even if Steinhoff had violated listing requirements, she had to determine whether suspending the listing of Steinhoff’s securities from the exchange was in the public interest.
