- February 16, 2015
- Posted by: kunalsabnis
- Category:BLOG, Events, Mumbai, Research Challenge
Mumbai, India, 2 February 2015: At the 8th Annual CFA Institute Research Challenge of India, IIM Trichy and Symbiosis Pune (SCMHRD) emerged as winners. The India competition (www.iaipirc.org) witnessed 47 leading business schools and more than 229 students across the country competing over the past six months in the prestigious competition, an annual global educational initiative launched by CFA Institute. IIM Trichy and SCMHRD Pune will now go to represent India in the 2015 Asia Pacific Regional Final of the competition.
In India, CFA Institute and its member society Indian Association of Investment Professionals (IAIP) conducted the local competitions. This was supported by Bloomberg as the long-term corporate partner. Five regional winners were contesting the National Challenge viz. Indian Institute of Management, Shillong; S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai; Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi; Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli and Symbiosis Centre of Management and Human Resource Development, Pune.
The teams pitched their equity research on the subject companies to a panel of very senior industry practitioners, in a brief time-bound presentation followed by a rapid fire round of grilling questions making the interaction similar to a life-like scenario. The power packed panel of judges for the India National Final was Saurabh Mukherjea, CFA, CEO of Institutional Equities at Ambit Capital; Neelkanth Mishra, India Equity Strategist at Credit Suisse; R Srinivasan, Head of Equities at SBI Mutual Fund. The triumphant IIM Trichy and SCMHRD Pune teams are now gearing up to represent India at the Asia Pacific Regional Challenge to be held in March 2015 at Manila (Phillipines), where they will compete against teams from Beijing, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Melbourne, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Shanghai, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sydney, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The winner from there will go to Atlanta (USA) for the Global Challenge in April 2015.
Kishor Bagri, CFA, Director at IAIP said, “The continued partnership and contribution from our partner Bloomberg has enabled IAIP to take this annual event from strength to strength and has progressively gained visibility across renowned B Schools. The event is keenly sought after amongst the top B schools and has fostered healthy competition within individual B schools for team formation to represent their school. The hard work and focused effort of the last six months culminated with two teams out of the 47 schools making the cut to represent India at the Asia Pac levels. Congratulations to the winners and all the best for the next round. We thank industry professionals for mentoring and judging the teams, as well as faculty advisors for guiding the teams. The collective and sustained effort has helped enhance the quality of future investment professionals. The students also benefitted through very comprehensive feedback session by the judges which would be of immense value in their professional careers.”
The CFA Institute Research Challenge aims to provide university students with an unparalleled experience of working with investment industry professionals and publicly traded companies to produce an equity research report, as well as to promote the best practices in research among the next generation of analysts. Each participating team was mentored by a CFA Charterholder or an experienced practitioner, and all participants were introduced and held to the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. Each university was represented by a team of students who undertook review of a public company comprising of detailed interactions with senior executives at companies, investment thesis and risks analysis, financial modeling, valuation, comparable benchmarking, scenario creation and writing a detailed equity research report and presentation around all these aspects.
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