During the last decade, the disciplines of Data Mining and Operations Research have come into increasingly close contact. As a consequence the terms “Business Analytics” and “Intelligent Optimization” are used to refer to the applications of quantitative and analytical techniques, seeking to improve existing methods or to solve complex problems e.g. in finance and marketing, as well as in a wide range of other areas.

This special issue is aimed to present recent developments and to identify future challenges in this novel combination of research areas. For this purpose, we are looking for original contributions on topics related to Business Analytics and Intelligent Optimization in finance and industry.

We are inviting researchers to submit top-quality papers providing their contribution to one of the following areas:

- Methodological Developments related to Business Analytics and Intelligent Optimization,
- Optimization in Data Mining,
- Applications focused on Business Analytics and Intelligent Optimization in Finance and Industry.