Pascal Quiry holds the BNP Paribas Chair in Finance at HEC Paris and he is a founder of an investment fund which specialises in investing in start-ups and unlisted SMEs. He is a former managing director in the M&A division of BNP Paribas where he was in charge of deals execution.

Yann Le Fur is head of the Corporate Finance Group of Natixis Americas after working as an investment banker for a number of years, notably with Schroders, Citi and Mediobanca and as an M&A director for Alstom.

Pierre Vernimmen, who died in 1996, was both an M&A dealmaker (he advised Louis Vuitton on its merger with Moët Hennessy to create LVMH, the world luxury goods leader) and a finance teacher at HEC Paris. His book Finance d'Entreprise was, and still is, the top-selling financial textbook in French-speaking countries and is the forebear of Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice.