News and Events
Nation's Leading MBA Students Descend Upon Johnson School in 6th Annual MBA Stock Pitch Competition
October 24, 2007 | Ithaca, NY | On November 2, 2007, the Johnson School's Sixth Annual Stock Pitch Competition will pit teams of students from top schools against each other to prepare and present buy or sell recommendations for what they predict will be next year's big performers. The teams pitch their stock picks to a panel of Wall Street professionals, while facing what can be grueling questions that replicate the environment at top investment firms. In the most competitive applicant pool since the competition started in 2003, the field was narrowed from 19 schools down to 12 through a formal application process. The final teams will come to Cornell to participate for a chance to win $3,000 and gain access to industry professionals and recruiters.
Fidelity Investments is the lead corporate sponsor and Joel Tillinghast, senior portfolio manager at Fidelity, will serve as both a judge and the keynote luncheon speaker. Other sponsors include Jack Ferraro (MBA '70) a private investor and Johnson School alumnus, State Street Global Advisors, Wellington Management, Barclays Global Investors and CFA Institute. Sponsorship affords the right to send both a judge and a recruiter to the competition, which has become an opportunity for investment research recruiters to gain early access to top students from leading universities across the United States.
The following universities were selected to participate in this year's competition:
- Columbia Business School
- Cornell University (Johnson)
- Duke University (Fuqua)
- New York University (Stern)
- Northwestern University (Kellogg)
- University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
- University of Maryland (Smith)
- University of Michigan (Ross)
- University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
- University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
- University of Virginia (Darden)
- University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business
After a brief training session held by representatives from Capital IQ, FactSet, StockVal (Reuters) and Thomson One Analytics (Thomson Financial), judges will assign one common stock and a list of stocks from two different industries to the participating teams. Students will use the resources available at the Johnson School's Parker Center for Investment Research to decide whether to present a long (buy), neutral (hold), or a short (sell) recommendation on the common stock. For each of the two assigned industries, students must choose a company that they will pitch as either a long or short candidate. Teams will have until midnight on Thursday to prepare for the three presentations.
The preliminary rounds include presentations on the common stock and on one industry-specific stock on Friday morning. The field is narrowed to four finalist teams who present the other industry-specific stock after lunch on Friday afternoon. The announcement and presentation of awards will be made at 3:30 pm.
For more information on the MBA Stock Pitch Competition, please visit www.mbastockpitch.com.
