Accounting and Finance

UCC team from Accounting & Finance runners up in the EMEA Region final of the CFA institute’s Global Investment Research (GIRC) Challenge

A UCC team from Accounting & Finance finished runners up in the European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Region final of the CFA institute’s Global Investment Research (GIRC) Challenge in London on 15th March 2012.  They had previously won the Irish final held at Davys Stockbrokers on 9th February 2012.
 
The team is comprised of Aoife McCarthy, Ava Gaffney, Cormac O’Flynn, David Nunan and Robert Sweeney.  The team’s professional mentor is Ken Power of Killeevan Investment Consultants and Dr Ray Donnelly is the academic advisor.  The team’s financial analysis of Origin Enterprises plc enabled them defeat teams from NUI Galway, Trinity College, and Smurfit Business School in Irish final.  They defeated five country winners in London to get to the final four of the 23 finalists including The University of Pretoria, South Africa, ALBA Graduate Business School, Greece, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia and the previous year’s world champions Politecnico di Milano of Italy.

The Global Investment Research Challenge is a real world investment competition. Over 3,200 students representing more than 700 of the top university business and finance programs in 55 countries, are participating in the GIRC in 2012. The universities assemble teams of three to five business and finance students who work directly with a company in researching and preparing a company analysis.  The teams' final presentations are locally evaluated by high-profile panels of heads of research, portfolio managers, and chief investment officers from the world’s top firms.  The local champions advance to regional competitions in the Americas, Asia, and Europe and then to the global final.  

UCC has now won the Irish leg of this competition on three of the four occasions that it has been run and won the  EMEA final in 2009 and finished runners up in 2012.