Pavithra Kumar, PhD, CFA

Principal

P: 917 944 8204
E: PavithraKumar@AACG.com
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Dr. Kumar has 15 years of experience in economic consulting and specializes in the application of economic and financial theory to questions arising in complex securities and finance litigation. She has expertise in damages quantification, valuation models, securities, and structured finance litigation, and is proficient in the use of sophisticated statistical modeling and econometric techniques. She has been engaged several times as an expert. Dr. Kumar’s work has contributed to several high-profile wins, including a multibillion-dollar hotel acquisition dispute in which she led teams supporting academic experts in their assessments of the post-transaction performance of the acquired hotels and the resultant decline in value. In other matters, she has led teams in the preparation of economic, financial, and statistical analyses through all stages of the litigation process – including deposition and trial testimony.

In previous consulting roles, Dr. Kumar led cross-office teams in cases spanning securities class action, M&A and valuation-related matters, damages estimation in a variety of contexts, including trademark infringement, securities class actions, private equity valuation, and ERISA suits. She has supported industry experts in fields including sports and entertainment and fiduciary process, and academic experts in areas including corporate governance, class certification and market efficiency, securities lending, banking and solvency. Earlier in her career, in a U.S. government fraud investigation into a major credit rating agency after the 2008 financial crisis, she led a team that provided evidence that key inputs in the agency’s risk models inflated ratings of collateralized debt obligation (CDO) tranches, culminating in a multibillion-dollar settlement.

Dr. Kumar has published articles on hedge fund performance persistence and the nature and impacts of high-frequency trading in multiple academic journals. She previously worked in the global technical strategy group of a major securities brokerage and financial advisory services firm, where she built an online tool to back-test complex trading strategies based on a selection of technical signals.

Dr. Kumar holds a B.Sc. in mathematics and economics from London School of Economics and Political Science and a Ph.D. in finance from MIT Sloan School of Management.