Photo courtesy of NASDAQ OMX Group
Fordham will launch a new Master of Science in Global Finance (MSGF) program in cooperation with Peking University, and has received a $1 million grant from the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation to help fund the program in its first three years.
Fordham’s relationship with NASDAQ will allow the University to expand opportunities for international education, especially in the burgeoning China market.
The MSGF program was registered officially with the New York State Education Department last September, and will launch this year. The board’s approval was the final step in a yearlong program development effort between Peking University’s National School of Development (NSD) and Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA).
“Thanks to our partnership with the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation, Fordham is once again taking a leadership position in business education,” said Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., senior vice president/ chief academic officer at Fordham. “International experience—in and outside the classroom—will prepare graduates of the MSGF program to lead in a world of interconnected, 24/7 markets. That the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation has seen fit to fund the program so generously ratifies its importance to the finance community.”
“The NASDAQ OMX Group understands that education is an important part of the ecosystem needed to develop innovative companies that will contribute to the growth of the economy in the U.S. and China,” said Eric Landheer, head of Asia Pacific for NASDAQ OMX.
“The NASDAQ Stock Market currently lists 126 Chinese companies, including 33 Chinese companies that listed in 2009 alone,” he added.
The program is designed to prepare professionals for leadership and management roles in the global financial services industry with a set curriculum divided over three trimesters and two countries. The first students will begin coursework in China this spring and continue at Fordham in the summer.
“With the MSGF, the Graduate School of Business Administration takes up a task central to the challenge that our national leaders are emphasizing—the task of strengthening cooperative business and economic relations between China and America,” said Robert Himmelberg, Ph.D., interim dean of GBA and co-dean of business faculty. “Our Department of Finance has achieved a very high degree of national recognition for its research and teaching capacities and will offer financial training of the highest quality to many in China’s next generation of top business leaders. It is a mission to which our faculty is fully equal.”
Study will be split between Peking University’s campus in Beijing and Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. The program will cover several important areas of the financial services industry, including financial management of multinational companies; risk management; portfolio strategies in equity and fixed income securities; and trading of complex securities in the global financial markets.
The curriculum is designed to give students an awareness of the current challenges in the global financial industry, as well as a good foundation in industry theory and applications.
Peking University is China’s first modern research university, and the country’s first national university. The National School of Development was established in 2008 based on the prestigious China Center for Economic Research (CCER). NSD is committed to the internationalization, standardization and localization of the study of the social sciences in China, and to innovation in disciplinary systems, academic perspectives and research methods.
“We look forward to working with NASDAQ on other business education programs,” Freedman said. “We believe the partnership will yield a richer curriculum for our students and a more talented pool of future executives for NASDAQ and the industry in general.”
