The team of Grant Fleagle, Jake Newsom, Tyler Hendrickson, and Tanner Steele, students in LSBE’s Financial Markets Program, knows as they earned that claim to fame after competing with 57 international teams in the preliminary round of the Americas Regional Final of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute’s Annual Research Challenge on April 25.
This is the third straight year that an LSBE team has advanced to the Americas Regional, with a total of four opportunities to compete at that level since CFA Minnesota society began hosting a local competition nine years ago.
The second round of competition consisted of five teams in two groups. Teams were Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines), Barna Management School (Dominican Republic), Canisius College (Buffalo NY), Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (Mexico City), John Carroll University (University Heights OH), Missouri State University (Springfield MO), Queen’s University (Kingston ON, Canada), Rutgers University (New Brunswick NJ), Universidad Adolfo Ibañez (Santiago Chile), Moscow State University (Moscow Russia), University of Lausanne (Switzerland), University of Minnesota–Duluth, and University of Wisconsin Madison.
Ateneo de Manila and Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico were the two winners with Ateneo de Manila winning the CFA Global Challenge, the top honor in a final competition.
Last year’s LSBE team advanced to the Global Challenge, which was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
LSBE put together two teams for the CFA Challenge, and they prepared throughout the year under the guidance of faculty mentor and Financial Markets Program Director Joe Artim and industry mentors David Brandmire, CFA, Vice President, Senior Fixed Income Analyst at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis and Doug Greiner, CFA, Director of Research & Portfolio Manager Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas Asset Management, LLC. However, only one of LSBE’s teams advanced out of the Midwest Regional competition.
“I am extremely proud of our CFA Research team and their accomplishment of reaching the Americas’ Regional final again this year!” said Artim.
“Naturally, we wanted to advance to Globals again this year, but the competition attracts some of the best young minds in investment finance from around the world. Our team faced some very stiff competition in the preliminary, beating top-tier teams from Marquette University [Milwaukee WI], John Hopkins University [Baltimore MD], University of Sao Paulo POLI [Brazil], University of Sao Paulo FEA [Brazil], and Chapman University [Orange CA]. I was very pleased that we advanced to the Americas’ Regional final later that night. This was our second straight year advancing to the Americas’ Regional final, and I am pleased with our success! This year, LSBE was able to field two highly skilled teams, which finished neck and neck at the local level, champion and runner up. Only one team is permitted to advance, but our other team was equally as good. Our teams worked very hard this year and put their hearts and souls into their work. We were deeply honored to capture the local title again and have the chance to represent our program, school, university, and local at the Americas Regional final.”
The CFA Challenge impacts 4,000 volunteers, 6,000 students from over 1,100 universities globally. The underlying purpose of the challenge is to help develop best practices for future investment professionals and provide the opportunity for experienced practitioners to give back to the industry’s next generation. For more details about the Research Challenge go to the CFA Institute website at cfainstitute.org and click on Research Challenge under Societies.
Learn more about LSBE's Financial Markets Program.