Chapel Hill, N.C. (PRWEB) November 24, 2014
MBA students from 16 leading business schools battled for the top spot in the premier investment management competition – the Alpha Challenge – hosted by the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School Nov. 20-21, 2014.
Columbia Business School won first place with its team of first-year MBA students Damian Creber, Kevin Lin and Edward Reynolds. They pitched MRC Global for their long investment and Cardtronics for their short investment recommendations.
The University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finished second and third, respectively.
Now in its 10th year, the Alpha Challenge pits MBA teams against each other as they present one long and one short investment recommendation from a predefined universe of stocks. They defend their analysis in front of a panel of distinguished judges who are hedge fund managers, institutional portfolio managers and equity research analysts.
“This competition tests the investment management skills of some of the best MBA students in the world,” said Chip Snively, who teaches corporate finance and investment management at UNC Kenan-Flagler. “It also provides a setting for investment management leaders to interact with the students and identify top talent for their firms.”
The two-day event began with firms interviewing candidates on Thursday, followed by an evening of networking. The competition took place Friday and featured a keynote talk by Robert Lanphier, a partner and portfolio manager at William Blair.
Jim Jones, research analyst at William Blair co-founded the Alpha Challenge when he was an MBA student at UNC Kenan-Flagler in 2004, and remains deeply involved in competition including serving as a judge.
“We started this event because the buy side of investment management doesn’t have a formal recruiting process like the sell side does,” Jones said. “Today the Alpha Challenge provides learning experiences for the students and recruiting opportunities for the companies.”
The students competed on their home campuses for the opportunity to represent their schools at the Alpha Challenge at UNC Kenan-Flagler, and once selected, submitted a one-page stock idea along with their resumes. MBA student team teams were fielded by:
The investment professionals who served as judges for the 2014 Alpha Challenge were:
William Blair was the lead sponsor of the 2014 Alpha Challenge. Other sponsors were:
For more information, visit http://www.alphachallenge.com.
About the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School
Consistently ranked one of the world's best business schools, UNC Kenan-Flagler is known for its collaborative culture that stems from its core values: excellence, leadership, integrity, community and teamwork. Professors excel at both teaching and research, and demonstrate unparalleled dedication to students. Graduates are effective, principled leaders who have the technical and managerial skills to deliver results in the global business environment. UNC Kenan-Flagler offers a rich portfolio of programs and extraordinary, real-life learning experiences: Undergraduate Business (BSBA), full-time MBA, Executive MBA Programs (Evening, Weekend and global OneMBA®), online MBA@UNC, UNC-Tsinghua Dual-Degree EMBA, Master of Accounting, PhD, Executive Development, and UNC Business Essentials programs. It is home to the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.