New York (April 27, 2005) – With a ‘buy’ recommendation, the team from Fordham Business School won the Third Annual NYSSA Investment Research Challenge, held on April 21st at Goldman, Sachs & Co.
In the closest competition since the Challenge’s inception, Fordham was tied with the team from the Lubin School of Business at Pace University after the written and presentation scores were tallied. The tiebreaker was the presentation score – with Fordham edging out Pace by 3/10ths of a point. The other finalist teams represented Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business and the NYU Stern School of Business.
“If the quality of the work and the enthusiasm shown by all the teams are representative of the future participants in our industry, I think the securities research profession will be in good hands for many years to come,” remarked panelist Jack Rivkin, chief investment officer and member of the Executive Management Committee of Neuberger Berman LLC.
Each team had 10 minutes to convince Rivkin and the rest of the expert panel of their recommendations on Syms Corp., the off-price retailer based in Secaucus, N.J. Rivkin was joined on the panel by chair Martin S. Fridson, CFA, CEO of FridsonVision LLC and publisher of Leverage World; John J. Apruzzese, CFA, director of equity management at U.S. Trust; Stephen J. Buell, director of global equity research at Prudential Equity Group LLC; Stephen E. Canter, chairman and CEO of The Dreyfus Corporation and vice chairman of Mellon Financial Corporation; and Steven Kent, CFA, managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Co.
The Challenge, created by the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA), is an eight-month educational initiative in which leading industry professionals teach students from top area business schools best practices in securities research. Gold sponsors of this year’s Challenge were CFA Institute, The Dreyfus Corporation and Goldman, Sachs & Co.
To reach the finals, these teams had previously bested students from Columbia Business School, Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick, Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business and The Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. John’s University, based on the quality of their written reports.
Fordham teammates Harsh Acharya, John Bitzer, Anita Erzetic, Michael Odell and Jacek Trzepla will now get a taste of life as an analyst when they spend a day with Buell’s equity research team at Prudential. “The quality of analysis by these students was exceptional – in line with what you would expect on the professional level. It’s always a pleasure to have these talented students in to show them what they can expect once they enter the profession,” said Buell.
For more information, please visit www.nyssa.org.
