This year’s competition will be the fourth consecutive year that a team from Goethe-Universität has participated. This year's team is a five-student team composed of three bachelor and two master students.
The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition which provides students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis and professional ethics. Each student participant will be tested on their analytic, valuation, report writing and presentation skills and gain real-world experience as they assume the role of a research analyst.
All teams research the same publicly traded company, which has been selected by the CFA Society Germany. This includes a question and answer session with company management at the company´s headquarters. Each team is mentored by a CFA Charterholder with expertise in research analysis, who will review and critique the team's written report. Additionally, each team will have a faculty advisor. Professor Mark Wahrenburg, Chair of Banking and Finance, will be this year’s faculty advisor for the Goethe team.
The top three teams with the best written reports will be invited to Frankfurt to present their valuation results to a high-profile panel of CFA Charterholders and executives from the financial industry. The winning team will then be selected based on the best combined scores for the written report and the presentation. After winning the German final, the team will participate in the CFA Institute Regional Challenge for the EMEA-region on April 1st & 2nd, in Mailand, Italy. Should the team win the Regional Challenge, they will be invited to participate in the Global Challenge on April 25th, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Previous winners at the German national level have been:
2010-2011 – Goethe Business School, Goethe-Universität
2011-2012 – European Business School, EBS Universität
2012-2013 – Universität Mannheim
The Research Challenge will kick-off this Fall with the German national competition concluding in early February 2014.