(Left to right) Yacine Drissi Qeytoni, Sruthi Nair, Sharad Gopal, Shahzad Aziz Hussain, and Romel Sabat

Congratulations to the students from the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University for their compelling research which earned them the local level CFA Institute Research Challenge Award. The student team members, Yacine Drissi, Sharad Gopal, Shahzad Aziz Hussain, Sruthi Nair and Romel Sabat, each will receive a thousand dollar prize and will be advancing to the Americas regional competition of the CFA Instititue Research Challenge in New York City on 23 – 24 February 2019. Winners of each regional level will advance to the global finals.

“Winning CFA Institute’s Research Challenge local competition is a significant accomplishment due to the high quality and large quantity of participating schools in this competition every year. This makes it a significant accomplishment just to advance to the regional presentation phase of the competition. At this second stage, tough competition only gets tougher, and I am extremely proud of our team who prevailed this year. Our success is a reflection of many hours of hard work, dedication and ability to perform exceptionally well under pressure at the local competition amongst other highly motivated student teams. Our team is comprised of five students from our Master of Finance program based in Toronto. On behalf of the team members, I would like to extend sincere thanks to their industry mentor Andrew Cox, CFA, of Guardian Capital for his invaluable guidance, support and key insights. We would also like to extend special thanks to the continuous support provided by CFA Society Toronto staff.” said Dr. Sean Cleary, CFA, Director of the Master of Finance program at Smith School of Business, Research Challenge Faculty Advisor and CFA Society Toronto volunteer.

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that provides university students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis. Students work in teams to research and analyze a publicly traded company, and each team writes a research report on its assigned company with a buy, sell, or hold recommendation. Teams that progress to local, regional and global finals must present and defend their analysis to a panel of industry professionals. Students learn from experienced industry experts and peers from the world’s top business schools.

“The CFA Institute Research Challenge gave us a unique opportunity to leverage our academic knowledge to perform thorough industry analysis, investment valuation and present our stock recommendation to industry experts. Analyzing one of the biggest Canadian companies, BCE, taught us how to think objectively from an investor perspective. Above all, we enjoyed working as a team and we are ecstatic that all of the hard work, time and effort paid off. Winning this challenge would not have been possible without our mentors Dr. Sean Cleary, CFA and Andrew Cox, CFA, to whom we are very grateful for their continued support. Thank you, CFA Society Toronto, for this memorable experience!” said Sruthi Nair, Smith School of Business team member.

For more information visit CFA Institute Research Challenge

Media contacts

Jonathan Mai
CFA Society Toronto
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Phone: (416) 366-5755 X 235
E-mail: media@cfatoronto.ca
Twitter: @cfatoronto 

About CFA Society Toronto
CFA Society Toronto is Canada’s largest Society of CFA® Charterholders, dedicated to supporting the professional and business development of over 10,000 members. We provide our membership with a local perspective on a global designation through our member services, which include: educational programs, sponsored events, employment postings, quarterly newsletters and networking opportunities. A not-for-profit organization, CFA Society Toronto is affiliated with CFA Institute, the global body that administers the Chartered Financial Analyst® curriculum and sets voluntary, ethics-based performance-reporting standards for the investment industry. CFA Society Toronto’s members are leaders in ethics in the financial community. For more information, please refer to www.cfatoronto.ca