Stephen H. Penman is the George O. May Professor in the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He also serves as co-director of Columbia's Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis. Prior to his appointment at Columbia in 1999, Penman was the L. H. Penney Professor in the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1990 to 1995 he served as Chairman of the Professional Accounting Program and Chairman of the Accounting Faculty at Berkeley. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the London Business School, as the Jan Wallander Visiting Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, and in the Cheng Tsang Mun Chair Visiting Professorship at Singapore Management University.

Professor Penman received a first-class honors degree in Commerce from the University of Queensland, Australia, and M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. His research deals with the valuation of equity and the role of accounting information in security analysis. Professor Penman has published widely in finance and accounting journals and has conducted seminars on fundamental analysis and equity valuation for academic and professional audiences. In 1991 he was awarded the Notable Contribution to Accounting Literature Award by the American Accounting Association and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and in 2002 he was awarded the American Accounting Association and Deloitte & Touche Wildman Medal for the first edition of Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation, published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin. In 2011 Penman received the Rodger F. Murray Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance. His book, Accounting for Value, was published by Columbia University Press in 2011. He is an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and is on the editorial board of the Schmalenbach Business Review .