Mark L. Mitchell

Mark Mitchell is a Founding Principal at Optima Global Arbitrage, an affiliate of Optima Global Trading that specializes in the research, development and management of arbitrage and corporate event strategies. Mark is also an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prior to co-founding Optima Global Arbitrage, Mark was a finance professor at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. Previously, he worked in the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he wrote several research papers on mergers and acquisitions. Mark publishes frequently and has won four paper-of-the-year awards: a Smith Breeden Prize from Journal of Finance, a Merton Miller Prize from Journal of Business, a Graham and Dodd Scroll from Financial Analysts Journal and a Roger F. Murray Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance; and also received five teaching awards at the University of Chicago. He joined the board of directors at TD Ameritrade in 1996, and he was serving as chair of the risk committee when the company was acquired in 2020. Mark graduated summa cum laude from the University of Louisiana at Monroe with a B.B.A. in economics and earned an M.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in applied economics from Clemson University.