PH rocks global ‘investment olympics’

NIGEL Williamson Lee (left), Geoffrey Archangel Bautista, Corrine Francesca Reyes, Diego Mikhail de Ocampo and Miguel Alfonso Solidum

They topped the national level investment research challenge held earlier this year, earning the right to represent the Philippines in the regional and global levels, which they likewise aced.

It didn’t matter that they hailed from a country with a smaller capital market. This team of five financial wiz kids from the University of the Philippines-Diliman proved that when it comes to equities research, the Philippines can produce the world’s finest.

The UP Diliman team—consisting of Geoffrey Archangel Bautista, Diego Mikhail de Ocampo, Nigel Williamson Lee, Corrine Francesca Reyes and Miguel Alfonso Solidum—was recently named the winner of the eighth annual CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Institute Research Challenge Global Final, an annual competition deemed as ‘the investment Olympics’ for university students.

At the global final round held in Singapore last April, the team beat formidable opponents from Italy (Politecnico di Milano) and the United States (University of Missouri, Kansas City).

It was the second time for the Philippines to win this Global CFA Investment Research Challenge, the last time of which happened in 2010, which was then also won by a team from UP Diliman. Thanks to the premier state university, the Philippines is so far the only country to have won the global finals twice.

“The Philippines is considered ‘the country to beat’ in the competition,” says April Lee-Tan, president of the CFA Society of the Philippines, noting that local teams had made it to the regional finals five times in the last six years of participating in this event. In training winning analysts, the Philippines has thus been compared to Venezuela’s training of beauty queens.

“I hope that it’s not only competitions that we win! I hope this means that with our talent pool, our finance industry will some day be as developed as Hong Kong and Singapore,” Lee-Tan says.

Globally, more than 3,700 students from more than 825 universities participated in some stages of this latest CFA challenge which stretched from May 2013 to April 2014.

“The level of talent we have seen throughout this global contest has been remarkable,” says John Bowman, managing director and co-lead of Education, CFA Institute.

The CFA research challenge is an annual educational initiative that seeks to promote best practices in equity research through hands-on mentoring and intensive training in company analysis and presentation skills. Through the course of the competition, which requires hundreds of hours of preparation, participants receive mentoring from an industry professional as they analyze a publicly traded company, write a professional research report, and present their research results and recommendations to a high-profile panel of experts. Points are awarded to teams on the basis of their investment case, their poise and their ability to answer the judges’ questions.

Team UP Diliman—coached by Daniel Vincent Borja, a faculty member at UP’s Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business and mentored by Raymund Abarra of Vicsal Investments—presented and defended a report on Manila Electric Co.

They were judged by a panel of CFA/investment industry experts that included Fullerton Fund Management Co. chief executive officer and chief investment officer Manraj Sekhon, Riedel Research Group equity research analyst Adrian Ciocoi, Al Meezan Investment Management chief executive Mohammad Shoaib and Equity Pricing Strategies founder and managing director Keith Neruda.

“UP was well prepared. Everything they presented had data and even the answers to questions had data to support their stand,” said Lee-Tan, when asked why she thought this team had stood out in this competition. Teamwork was likewise cited as a key ingredient. “All team members were able to contribute not only during the presentation but also during the Q&A (question and answer) section. In other teams, there were strong members who dominated the Q&A section,” she says.

Lee-Tan also cited the UP faculty members’ dedication to making sure that the students would work hard for the win. “They also provide good insights as the faculty members of UP are also investors in the stock market themselves so they have a good understanding of what investors want. From my years of experience in organizing this competition, the dedication of faculty members is essential in ensuring a good performance of the teams,” she says.

Highlights of the event

ALL MEMBERS of the UP Diliman team are BS Business Administration and Accountancy students who aspire to be the country’s next technocrats, entrepreneurs or corporate movers and shakers.

While rehearsing for the global leg of the competition, team member Lee kept on stuttering and forgetting his lines. “That was really scary to say the least. I’m sure my teammates and coaches were secretly panicking seeing me forget my lines since I was going to start the presentation. Fortunately, after a lot of encouragement and pats on the back, I was able to deliver my lines,” he says. “It just goes to show that there is no substitute to practice!”

“Winning the global championship aside, the best thing that happened in Singapore was meeting a lot of new friends— not only our fellow contestants but charterholders from the CFA Institute and finance professionals as well,” says Reyes, the only girl in the team.

For Solidum, one of the highlights of the competition was that the team had to compete for the regional and global finals on back-to-back nights. “We basically presented our report to the same audience but for a different set of judges. The setup worked to our favor as we were already able to get used to the feeling of presenting in front of people,” he adds.

Bautista, for his part, points out his interactions with a very wide array of global professionals provided the highlights from this experience. “Because we presented and got acquainted with the professionals practically at the same time, it gave us a totally different point of view in investing, and made the regional and global finals even more challenging,” he says.

One of the highlights for De Ocampo was a speech delivered by CFA Institute’s Charles Appeadu. “He said that human development would not be possible without finance, highlighting the role of finance professionals and reinforcing the need for ethical behavior in all aspects,” he says. “Also, meeting different students and professionals from different cultures really encouraged us to be more entrepreneurial in our thinking. It was a humbling experience considering that we still have a lot to learn, but it inspired us to keep an open mind and continue learning.”

Takeaways from the five

The UP Diliman team won a $10,000 grant for the university and each team member received a scholarship for the CFA program. But there are even more valuable takeaways. We asked each of these champions for their insights and this is what they shared:

Lee: “More than knowledge and talent, I found that patience and the eagerness to learn are what really supported us throughout the competition. Moreover, I discovered the hard way that there will always be someone smarter, more confident, and better equipped than myself. As such, it is important to keep a strong drive to better oneself.”

Reyes: “I realized that we must maintain confidence and tenacity in the face of adversity. Admittedly, there were a lot of smarter and more talented students in the competition; our team was composed of the youngest students! However, we did not let this fact deter us from focusing on the competition. I personally felt that we had something to prove, being one of the youngest and coming from a public university and a third world country. This just shows that aside from sheer talent, passion for learning and the drive to win can really take one a long way.”

Solidum: “The whole experience has taught me the value of always putting in your best effort regardless of the odds stacked against you. We knew as a team that we needed to give it our all if we wanted to win the global championship given the fact that representatives from other countries were mostly MBAs or MS Finance who are more knowledgeable and experienced in finance. To be able to prepare ourselves, we put in a lot of hours practicing our presentation and preparing for all the possible questions that may be asked during the competition. Fortunately all the hard work resulted to an unexpected yet satisfying victory.”

Bautista: “It is a cliché to say that the competition is for the team to beat itself. However, that is what this experience has taught the five of us. Four years back, our university already championed the research challenge to the global level. That is a testament that our university has the capacity to best the competitions we sign up for, and that it is up to the team to embrace the rigors of the preparation and to always be one up against themselves each day. Everything encompassing the preparations—simultaneous academics, distractions, late night works, and what not—all boil down to us beating our past selves. So in the series of preparations, we can’t do anything about not possessing graduate degrees to gain an edge, but we always had the ability to do something about ourselves to win.”

De Ocampo: “You’ve got to burn before you shine. For the past seven months, my teammates and I worked tirelessly on this contest. It was tough balancing everything, and up until the very end, we were still working very hard. What motivated us was our deep desire to prove that Filipino students from UP have what it takes to compete on a global scale. The unsung heroes of this victory are our families, friends, and professors, whose never-ending support helped us get through the toughest of times. We can never truly thank them enough. Overall, there really is no substitute for hard work and discipline, but passion and purpose make the journey a whole lot easier.”