A team of Russian students has won the prestigious CFA Institute Research Challenge for the first time, presenting an analysis of the investment attractiveness of metals and mining company Norilsk Nickel, Vedomosti reports.
The winners are students from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow’s Lomonosov state university (MSU). CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) is the most well-known and most reputable training program in the field of investment analysis and investment management in the world. Today, there are more than 160,000 CFA certificate holders in the world, including about 600 in Russia.
In the regional final of the competition, which was held in Zurich, 43 best teams from 40 countries of the EMEA region (countries of Europe, the Middle East and Africa) participated.
CFA Regional Associations annually hold a student competition, offering participants a few months to perform an in-depth analysis of a large public company and then defend their position in person – in the framework of presentations and question-answer sessions with market professionals. As a rule, a public company is chosen as the object of analysis, having shown itself to be an outstanding player last year. This time, the students chose Norilsk Nickel, which confirms the high interest of the investment community in the company’s activities.
“I want to thank Norilsk Nickel for the assistance in conducting the analysis. Our guys proved to everyone that it is a company of the future, and its shares are certainly worth investing in,” said Nikolay Pavlov, coordinator for corporate relations of the CFA association (Russia).
“Our company is a very interesting case for investment analysis, not only because of its size and business model, but also due to a unique basket of products, which is tied to many current trends of the global economy. We believe that the promotion of Norilsk Nickel’s investment history among future stock market professionals will become an additional factor in the growth of its investment attractiveness in the long term,” said Nornickel’s VP Vladimir Zhukov.
