Professor Beim had a 25-year career in investment banking, following which he became a professor in the Finance and Economics Division of Columbia Business School. He joined Columbia as an adjunct professor in 1989 and has been a full-time professor of professional practice since 1991. His areas of teaching include corporate finance, international banking and emerging financial markets.
He graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in political science from Stanford, and he continued his education as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, earning a master’s in politics.
Beim’s Wall Street career included 10 years at First Boston Corporation (1966–75), where among other assignments he started and ran the project finance group. He served as executive vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States during 1975–77. Following that, he joined Bankers Trust Company to start and run its investment banking business. During 1978–87, he was executive vice president and head, corporate finance department, and member of the management committee at Bankers Trust. From 1987 to 1989, he was a managing director at Dillon Read & Co.
In 2000, Beim published a textbook with Charles Calomiris called Emerging Financial Markets. His articles include “Why are Banks Dying?” Columbia Journal of World Business, Spring 1992; “Beyond the Savings and Loan Crisis,” The Public Interest, Spring 1989; and “Rescuing the LDCs,” Foreign Affairs, July 1977. He has also written numerous papers on banking and finance in connection with consulting projects. These include “The Determinants of Bank Loan Pricing” (1996), “What Triggers a Banking Crisis?” (2001) and “Japan’s Internal Debt” (2002).
Beim serves as a director of a cluster of mutual funds managed by Merrill Lynch. His nonprofit work includes chairman of Wave Hill, former chairman of Outward Bound, trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and governor of the West Chop Club.