IAIP Challenge

The Fourth India Investment Research Challenge

February 5^th 2011

In line with the tradition of CFA Institute IAIP successfully organized its Fourth India Investment Research Challenge (IRC) with finals held on February 5^th 2011 at Four Seasons, Mumbai.

IRC is a unique opportunity for university students, investment professionals, publicly traded companies and corporate sponsors from across the globe to jointly promote the best practices in equity research. All participants are introduced and held to the CFA Institute’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct.

This year saw nearly 30 leading business schools from across India participating in this contest. The universities assembled teams of 3 to 5 students who worked directly on the company allotted for research and analysis. Each team was assigned a dedicated mentor who was either CFA charter holder or an experienced industry professional or both.

The India zonal / regional contests were held on January 22^nd for North and West and January 29^th for South and East at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkatta respectively.

The equity research reports have been written under the guidance of mentors within the boundaries of the rules like maximum number of hours allowed for interaction and after the presentation and Q&A session by the companies under research. Analysis is based on publicly available information. The submitted reports were graded by volunteer CFA charter holders actively engaged with equity research and investment management business. The qualifying teams were invited to make a presentation to a panel of judges who are experts from their respective industry. The team with the highest score comprising of the research report and interactive presentation got selected for the regional and national finals.

The companies selected for analysis had to be below $4bn in market capitalization. Accordingly, the stocks given to each region for analysis were HCL Technologies in the North, United Breweries in the South, Exide Industries in the East and IDFC in the West.

The four teams which made it to the finals one each from various zones are as follows:

North Zone: IIM, Lucknow

South Zone: IFMR, Chennai

East Zone: IIM, Shillong

West Zone: FLAME, Pune

Winner

IIM, Shillong

Team – Sakshi Sharma, Veena Sankaran, Sumit Bagla, Sumit Kedia, Hitesh Gulati.

Mentor – Pramod Dangi, CFA

Stock – Exide Industries

1^st Runner Up

IFMR Chennai

Team – Divya Prakash Singh, Ravi Jain, Arnab Sinha, Shashank

Mentor – Jinesh Gandhi, CFA

Stock – United Breweries

Esteemed panel of Judges for the finals:

Suresh A Mahadevan, CFA, Head of India Equities, UBS Securities India Pvt. Ltd.

Sunil B Singhania, CFA, Head of Equity Investments, Reliance Mutual Fund

Vikram Kotak, Chief Investment Officer, Birla Sunlife Insurance

The winner represented India at the Asia Pacific Investment Research Challenge on March 25^th and 26^th at Bali, Indonesia. Four finalists out of nearly 400 university teams will converge to vie for the Global IRC title in Omaha, Nebraska on April 8^th, 2011. The winning team will be granted USD10,000 for the accomplishment.