Participating in the CFA Institute Research Challenge for the seventh year in a row, Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) MSc Finance students won second place in the French Finals of this year held on the March 3 2021.
The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an opportunity for students to learn from leading industry experts and to compete against other students from the best finance programs in the world. The MSc Finance program at Grenoble Ecole de Management is part of the CFA Institute University Affiliation program. GEM students have been selected twice for the finals, in 2014 and this year.
Safwan Mchawrab, MSc Finance Associate Program Director and the team tutor shares, "We have been participating in the CFA – Challenge each year as we think it is a great opportunity for students to work with a real-life case and gain professional experience". "In addition to networking by meeting analysts and CFA holders, they also have the opportunity to meet the CFO of the assigned company."
Each year the French finals are held in Paris. Due to the current health restrictions, the finals this year were organized via Zoom. Only three universities where invited to this years finals, IAE Lille, University of Angers and GEM.
The CFA Challenge consists of four steps:
- An analysis of a public company
- Mentoring by an investment professional
- Writing a research report on the company the group has chosen
- Presentation of the research to a panel of experts from top financial institutions.
The winners of local competitions go through to finals of their geographical region with the end goal of going through to the worldwide finals of the Challenge.
A business case with a touch of the COVID-19 crisis
This year the participating students at GEM had the opportunity to analyse Nexity, one of the leaders within the real estate market in France. The two key challenges the students faced were to thoroughly understand the business model of each company and to incorporate the effects of the Covid-19 crisis to the evaluation process.
The GEM team was truly international this year as all of its five members came from different countries, representing three different continents: Kazuki Takahashi from Japan, Garreg Jutteau from France, Christian Gerlach from Germany, Dingjun Kang from China and Cameron Lee from South Africa.
The students found that participating in the CFA Challenge was an amazing opportunity to work on a real-life case and present it in front of a panel of top- class analysts. The Challenge also demonstrated the value of team work in the financial analysis and allowed the participants to improve their skills in company analyses. The international context of the team and challenge also provided them with a great opportunity to grow their international professional network
The Grenoble Ecole de Management MSc Finance is ranked 16th worldwide in the Financial Time Masters of Finance Ranking 2020.
