2006 Headlines
Cornell's Johnson School Hosts MBA Stock Pitch Competition
MBAs will choose next best performing stocks for 5th Year in front of Wall Street Analysts and Portfolio Managers
Ithaca, New York - The nation's top MBA programs will select the hottest stocks of the year under the watchful eye of Wall Street executives at the fifth annual MBA Stock Pitch Competition at the Johnson School at Cornell University on November 3, 2006.
The competition gathers top MBA students to showcase their stock-picking skills in front of a panel of Wall Street money managers. The event challenges teams of three finance students from elite universities to prepare and present buy or sell recommendations for what they predict will be next year's big performers. In doing so, they often select great investments.
In previous years, Stock Pitch winners have made selections that have outperformed the overall market. In April 2005, the winning choices came from the Johnson School and included: Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (NYSE: FCX), trading around $40 in April 2005 and closing near $58 in October 2006. The team also selected Barrick Gold (NYSE: ABX), trading around $24 in April 2005 and which recently closed above $30 in October 2006. The winning team from November 2005 was Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
There is growing interest in the Stock Pitch competition with a record number of business schools sending teams from the following universities:
- Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
- Columbia University
- Cornell University (Johnson)
- Duke University (Fuqua)
- Dartmouth University (Tuck)
- New York University (Stern)
- Northwestern University (Kellogg)
- University of Chicago
- University of Maryland
- University of Michigan
- University of Rochester (Simon)
- University of Virginia (Darden)
The teams arrive on Wednesday, November 1. The research component begins on Thursday, November 2 when teams gather at Cornell's Parker Center, the Johnson School's premier research facility. After a training session to familiarize students with the latest financial tools including Capital IQ (Standard and Poor's), FactSet, StockVal (Reuters), and Thomson One Analytics (Thomson Financial), the student teams are assigned three stocks from multiple industries to pitch. They have until midnight to prepare for the three presentations. After conducting their research, teams will present their recommendations in front of Wall Street professionals on Friday morning, November 3. Twelve teams get pared down to the Final Six by lunch. After a final presentation, the winner will be announced at approximately 4:00 p.m. EST.
The winning team receives $3000 and $1500 goes to the second place winners. The competition is being sponsored by Jack Ferraro (MBA '70), a private investor and Johnson School alumnus, Barclays Global Investors, Fidelity Investments, UBS, Wellington Management, BlackRock and Morgan Stanley. Each sponsoring company is entitled to send a judge and a recruiter. This panel of investment industry experts judges participants based on their ability to function in a context that is very similar to the fast-paced and demanding environment that analysts and asset managers face on the job. Judges include top executives from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, State Street Global Advisors, Wellington Management and UBS. The event has become a rich source of top MBA talent for recruiters to meet in person. Recruiters from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management and UBS will be on hand during the event and other sponsoring companies can view resumes of all participants. Previous Stock Pitch finalists are now working at Deloitte & Touche, Fidelity Investments, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Putnam Investments, Standard Pacific, UBS, and other investment companies.
Updates during the event are available on the Johnson School site.
For more information contact:
Deirdre Snyder
Johnson School at Cornell University
607-255-3494
dgs37@cornell.edu
