A team of four students from The Australian National University (ANU) College of Business and Economics (CBE) recently competed in the prestigious 2024 CFA Institute Research Challenge World Finals in Warsaw Poland.
Founded in 1947, the CFA Institute is a global organization that provides education for investment professionals.
It offers the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, which covers corporate finance, ethics, economics, and financial analysis.
The ANU team consisted of Liam Newport, Alexander Norman, Chen Huan Liu, and Hugo Heanly. Hugo is a Lane Cove boy who went to St. Michaels Primary School and St. Ignatius College Riverview. He recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Finance from ANU and will start at Boston Consulting Group next year.
The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual, global competition designed to provide university students with invaluable real-world experience.
Participants gain hands-on training in equity analysis, honing their analytical, valuation, report-writing, and presentation skills.
Throughout the competition, students delve deep into a designated company, compiling a comprehensive research report and presenting their investment recommendation to a panel of industry experts. The ANU team studied Scentre Group (parent company of Westfield).
Before you can make the world finals, you must compete in local level competitions organized and judged by CFA Institute society members and volunteers who function as local hosts.
In preparation for the Sydney round, the team worked closely with their industry mentor, Michelle Wigglesworth from Australian Ethical Investment.
The competition began with the submission of an investment-recommendation report and modelling spreadsheet.
The reports were assessed by CFA judges, and four semi-finalist teams were selected to compete in the Sydney presentation semi-finals.
This was a significant hurdle because no ANU team has made it to the semi-finals in recent memory.
The winning university team from each local competition advances to the sub-regional competition.
The winning teams from each sub-regional competition advance to the regional competition. Regional winners advance to the Global Final.
CFA Institute hosts subregional, regional, and global competitions in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
The competition involved 6,700 talented participants from 1,100 universities worldwide who invested over 100 hours preparing, stepping into the roles of research analysts, and honing the skills essential for their future careers. From the local to the regional to the world finals, each phase rigorously tested their knowledge and resilience.
For each round, the ANU practised extensively and gave each other rigorous feedback, which the team believes led to their victory.
Hugo told ITC:
“The CFA Research Challenge was a unique experience, both challenging and immeasurably rewarding. The opportunity to present on the global stage not only invoked growth in our financial acumen but in diversity of thought – a necessity in navigating the challenges posed by the competition. Having team members (and most importantly mates) of such calibre made all the difference and is what I believe was the key ingredient in the group’s success.”
The global final featured top teams from:
University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines
Australia National University, Australia
WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany
Qatar University, Qatar
University of Waterloo, Canada
FGV – Fundação Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo, Brazil
The team from the University of Waterloo were the winners.
Well done Hugo and the team.
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