Wasim is an Associate Professor in Finance at Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University Dubai. Before joining Heriot-Watt in 2024, he held academic positions at Cranfield University, University of Birmingham, and Birmingham City University, building over 15 years of experience teaching finance across undergraduate, postgraduate, MBA, and executive programmes in the UK, Singapore, Oman, Pakistan, and the UAE.

A seasoned executive education specialist, he has designed and led training programmes for senior professionals from FTSE-listed companies and prominent multinational organisations, including major financial institutions and organisations across the public sector, retail, and energy industries. His research focuses on corporate finance, corporate governance, private equity, and innovation, and has been published in internationally renowned journals. His work has been cited in the Financial Times, Institutional Investor, and Private Equity News, a testament to its relevance beyond academia. He has supervised six doctoral students to completion across several UK universities.

Before entering academia, Wasim spent several years gaining hands-on industry experience in banking and finance, including work on projects funded by the World Bank and USAID. He holds a PhD in Finance from University of Birmingham, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and is an Associate of the Institute of Bankers, Pakistan.

• Corporate governance and board dynamics, including the roles of academic directors, generalist executives, and culturally diverse boards
• Private equity, venture capital, and entrepreneurial finance, with a focus on buyout longevity, IPO survival, and lockup agreements
• Corporate culture and its influence on innovation, CSR, and stakeholder outcomes, with a particular focus on emerging markets
• Shareholder litigation, legal institutions, and their effects on corporate behaviour, insider trading, and venture capital activity
• ESG performance and sustainable finance, including the relationship between environmental, social, and governance factors and loan contracting
• Financial markets and firm behaviour, including trade credit provision, information asymmetry, leverage, and firm value
• Natural language processing and textual analysis in finance, with applications in measuring corporate culture and analysing management discourse

Programme Director for MSc Finance & Management, Dubai

Member, School Disciplinary Committee