Atlantic Canada CFA Society Investment Research Challenge 2009

A team of honours finance students from the Schwartz School of Business and Information Systems competed in the third annual CFA Atlantic Investment Research Challenge held recently.

The Investment Challenge was held in conjunction with the Atlantic Valuation Conference as presented by the IMPACT Fund and Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University on Nov. 28, 2009. Teams from Saint Mary’s, the University of Prince Edward Island, Memorial University, the University of New Brunswick and St. Francis Xavier University all competed in this year’s competition. The winner of this year’s challenge was the team from Saint Mary’s University.

The Atlantic Canada CFA Society Investment Research Challenge is a competition in which student teams from Atlantic Canadian business schools write an equity research report on an assigned company and present their findings to a panel of investment industry experts.

The investment industry experts judging this year’s competition were Andrea Perry CFA, Seamark Asset Management, Bert Powell ‘86 CFA, BMO Capital Markets, Randy Cousins CFA, BMO Capital Markets, Mathieu Roy CFA, Louisbourg Investments and Bob Youden, Senior Vice President, Stantec Inc.

The challenge is designed to provide students with an opportunity to gain “real world” experience in equity analysis and a chance to put the knowledge they gain in the classroom into practice. The essence of this Investment Research Challenge is that teams prepared a research report and valuation of a subject company which had been chosen in September (i.e. Stantec Inc.) culminating in a buy/hold/sell recommendation.

The Atlantic Canada CFA Society is one of about 40 local CFA societies around the world holding Research Challenges this year for universities in their areas. The winning team from the Atlantic Canada CFA Society Investment Research Challenge advances to compete in the North American Regional Investment Research Challenge hosted by CFA Institute, to be held in New York City on March 18- 19, 2010.

The Schwartz School of Business team representing StFX included Rory MacDonald, Brett Stevenson, Corbin Bouree and Jeremy de Koe.