CFA Institute Investment Research Challenge 2017-2018.
Herewith we invite institutions involved in higher education in Croatia, Serbia and Hungary to participate in the Hungarian local round of the CFA Institute Investment Research Challenge, a widely respected global equity research contest. For each institution, up to TWO teams of 3 to 5 full-time students without a CFA charter or any extensive professional investment research experience (except interns). The challenge will be held entirely in English. Similar to previous years, participants of the local challenge will be rewarded by prizes of a total value of more than 1 million HUF.
This year, the primary sponsor of the challenge is Aegon Hungary Asset Management Co., who is honoured to announce that besides of the regular prizes members of the winning team will receive a tablet, while the team scoring second will be rewarded with an Amazon voucher. Besides best students from all teams in the competition will be considered for participation in Aegon Hungary Asset Management Internship program.
One faculty member per team is allowed to act as a university mentor (faculty adviser) to support the team. Another investment professional may be selected to serve as an industry mentor. For teams without own industry mentor there will be one CFA charterholder chosen by CFA Society Hungary. (Please do provide the name of your chosen industry mentor if any not later than together with the application of the team itself.)
The local challenge consists of two rounds. During the first one teams have to prepare a fundamental investment analysis (sell side report) of 8-10 pages on Waberer’s International Plc. (Bloomberg: WABERERS HB, Reuters: WABE.HU, Xetra: WABS, and BSE: WABERERS) in line with the “Written Report Guidelines” provided. As an aid to this, the company offers a general presentation on the firm on October 20, 2017, at its Budapest office and answers one email per team of any further specific questions until early December. It is not allowed to request any further help neither from the firm or investment professionals and professors as students are supposed to build their work on self-collected publicly available information only. Public sources may only be used with correct referencing. The deadline for electronic handing-in of the reports is noon (12.00 pm), 5 January 2018.
Teams have to choose their name, which may not by any means refer to or link to any person, institution or country in relation with the given team. It is only by this name that participants may identify themselves or mark their work to be handed in. Team members should evade using institutional (university or workplace linked) email addresses or another language than English when contacting the organisers or the industry mentor chosen by CFA Society of Hungary.
The authors of the best four research papers will qualify for the second round of the local contest to be organised 19 January 2018 (preliminary date). During this round teams have to present their work orally in English in front of a panel of independent and widely recognised investment professionals. Each of the 10 minutes presentations will be followed by a 10 minutes Q&A session. Each team will listen to all presentations but may not ask questions. The order of presenting will be decided randomly. The final ranking will be based 50% on the written report and 50% on the oral presentation.
The team winning the Hungarian local challenge will qualify for the EMEA regional final of CFA Institute Research Challenge planned to be held in Dublin, Ireland on 4-5 April 2018. The best team at the regional challenge may represent the region at the Global Final of the challenge organised on 20 April 2018, in Seoul, Korea. (All travel and lodging expenses for the regional and global round will be covered by CFA Institute both for the team members and their university mentor.) Both the regional and global final will be held in English.
Only teams registered before 9 October 2017, noon (12.00 p.m.) Central European Time may take part in the local challenge. Teams and institutions can register by sending an email giving the chosen name of the team, the university they belong to, the full name, phone number and email of each team members, the university mentor and the industry mentor if any. (Please, separate and mark the details of the latter two.)
Organisers expect registrations to be sent to Péter Varga, CFA, past president of the Hungarian society at:
Please note that no team member may be added or replaced later than two weeks before the deadline for handing in the written research. Participating teams, students, and mentors also have to register at CFA Institute homepage before 1 December 2017.
Only two teams per institution are allowed to participate. Should the organisers get more than two applications from the same institution, only the first two to arrive will be considered. Please, carefully consult the official rules of the challenge for limitations on the students allowed to participate. Remember that no student may take part twice at the CFA Institute Research Challenge. CFA charterholders are also excluded.
Registered teams will get the exact date and venue of the events and the detailed rules of the challenge per email. The local oral round of the challenge will only be organised once at least four universities hand in their written research as it is only in this case that the winner of the Hungarian round qualifies for the regional challenge.
For further information, please check:
https://www.cfainstitute.org/community/challenge/Pages/index.aspx
https://www.cfainstitute.org/community/challenge/involved/Pages/student welcome.aspx
or contact
Péter Varga, CFA (pvarga747@gmail.com).
We wish good luck to all of you.
CFA Society Hungary
