My Bro!

UNB INVESTMENT STUDENTS PLACE SECOND IN WORLD COMPETITION

(My brother, Brian, is the handsome one in the middle)

University of New Brunswick students placed second in the annual Global Investment Research Challenge held on May 1 in New York City.

UNB was the only Canadian team to make it to the competition. The students, who are all members of the university’s Student Investment Fund program, competed against teams from universities around the world.

They presented and defended their stock recommendations and were judged on their performance by industry experts. This gave them the opportunity to see how they stacked up against their peers.

Brian Bagnell, Dustin Besaw and Jason Misener, of Fredericton, and Guofeng (Jack) Ma, from China, are members of the team. Ian McAvity and Nathan Ough, both of Rothesay, were also in New York as observers. They are bringing back as much information as they can to help next year’s team prepare for the challenge.

During the competition, teams were given ten minutes to pitch their stock recommendation to panel members who were from companies such as UBS, Neuberger Berman, Strategas Research Partners and the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute.

Then, during a 10-minute question and answer period, panelists judged the students on their chosen companies and on how effectively they supported their recommendation, the quality of slides used, the strength of their arguments, and their ability to respond to questions. The judges looked for all members of the team to participate equally.

The Student Investment Fund program at UNB's Faculty of Business Administration allows students to invest real money in the capital markets.

Students make investment decisions using financial industry software, brokerage reports and other sources in their dedicated financial lab, the TSX Group Boardroom.

The initial $1 million to implement the Fund was provided to the Faculty in 1998 by the New Brunswick Investment Management Corporation. By the end of 2007, the student fund had grown to approximately $2.2 million.

(This article was copied from the UNB website, news section)

They were also featured in the Fredericton newspaper - the story is here.