AUC Students Ranked First in a National Finance competition

BY MARIAM WAHBA

Business Finance students won first place at the Certified Financial Analysts (CFA) Research Challenge competition, which was held at AUC on February 8.

The competition required students to conduct a full investment investigation on Goldentex, a worsted wool textile manufacturing company and exporter, and to study the company’s financial and future plans.

At the end of the competition, participants had to submit research reports and an investment presentation for the company.

“As a group, we worked together well; everyone knew [their] role and everyone was good at what he did,” said Perihan Hafez, a finance student who was on the AUC team.

The AUC team competed against the German University in Cairo, the British University in Egypt, Ain Shams University, Cairo University, and Helwan University.

Many students applied to participate in the competition but only 25 were accepted, based on GPA and the completion of certain courses.

Those accepted formed five teams, each with finance, actuarial science, and accounting students, and competed against each other in the CFA Qualifiers.

A panel of judges evaluated each team’s performance and chose the winning team.

The panel included the Chief Executive Officer of Ankar Investments, Ahmed Ozalp, Chief Financial Officer of Arafa Group, Mohamed Talaat, Vice President of HC investments, Walaa Hazem, and Aliaa Bassiouny, a Finance professor at AUC.

The five girls of the winning team, Ingy El-Morally, Perihan Hafez, Samar Seif, Marina Iskandar, and Sandra Boutrous, continued to the national competition on February 8, where they won against teams from different universities in Egypt.

After winning the national competition, each member was allowed to take the cup home for a while but it will eventually be kept at AUC.

“The competitions were time-consuming; it took the winning team a month to write the report and prepare the presentation for the qualifier contest and another two months of extensive research to prepare the report and presentation for the national competition,” El Morally said.

“We [received] a lot of help from the professors at our university,” said Seif, Actuarial Science student on the winning team.

Seif also said that the companies were cooperative and provided the information they needed for their reports.

The winning team will compete in another phase of the contest in Milan, Italy on April 1 against teams from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.