UJ Student Team To Represent SA Internationally, Underlines Standard Investment Analysis

Rethinking and reinventing business strategies, innovative ideas tackling complex business issues and well-executed presentations have won two University of Johannesburg (UJ) student teams the South African leg of industry-specific challenges.

The student teams from the Johannesburg Business School within the Department of Finance and Investment Management, represented UJ’s College of Business and Economics in the finals of respectively, the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute Research Challenge, and the Financial Planning Challenge hosted by Financial Planning Institute (FPI) the of South Africa.

The CFA Programme is a professional credential, which hosts the CFA Institute Research Challenge – an annual global competition that provides university students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis. In competing in this prestigious competition, students work in teams to research and analyse a publicly traded company, including meeting face-to-face with company management. The student teams drafted research reports on their assigned company with a buy, sell, or hold recommendation and four finalist teams were selected to present and defend their analysis to a panel of industry professionals on the 17^th of October 2017 at the JSE. The four teams in this year’s local final included UJ Team 1, UJ Team 2, a team from the University of Pretoria and a team from the University of Cape Town.

UJ Team 2 won the CFA Research Challenge local final and will be representing UJ and South Africa at the EMEA finals in Dublin, Ireland in April 2018. This competition involves thousands of students from over 1 000 universities in more than 75 countries. “Both teams that competed in the challenge this year represented UJ at the highest standard and demonstrated the excellence that we expect from students,” says Ms Corlise le Roux, Programme Manager and Investment Management Lecturer, UJ. This is the third time that UJ has won the local CFA Research Challenge in the past 5 years.

The Financial Planning Challenge (FPC) Competition is hosted by the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI) and prepares the next generation of financial planners. The competition is designed exclusively for students studying any financial planning or finance-inclined undergraduate degree programme registered in South Africa. The competition criteria illustrate potential avenues for satisfying Financial Planning Competency Framework and Standards. Teams participate in preparing and presenting a complete financial plan as well as compete in a quiz-style challenge. The UJ team compete against a team from Milpark Business School and a team from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in the FPC Final in Cape Town on the 19^th of October 2017 where the UJ Team won the challenge, making UJ the first University to win the FPC.

Ms Le Roux concludes: “The Department is extremely proud of our students who have managed to win two respective competitions in the finance industry within one week.”