Cornell hosts the first MBA Stock Pitch Competition, April 3-4

Students from the top U.S. business schools will compete in the first-ever MBA Stock Pitch Competition April 3 and 4 at Cornell.

The competition for future stock analysts is sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. It will take place at the Johnson School's Parker Center for Investment Research in Sage Hall in the center of campus.

The competition will provide a platform for students to showcase their stock picking and presentation skills, considered an important part of an analyst's job in the investment industry. The first-place team will receive a $3,000 award and the second-place team an award of $1,500.

"The Johnson School is hosting the competition because we believe the real-time, experiential focus that stock pitching represents is part of the future of investment management education at business schools," said Charles Lee, the Johnson School professor and expert on stock valuation who directs the Parker Center. "The new breed of investment analyst must be independent and able to provide strong analysis to back selections with a full understanding that success comes from the performance of the equity."

In addition to the Johnson School, teams of three are competing from top-tier business schools: Harvard, the University of Chicago, New York University, Dartmouth, Duke, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and the University of Michigan.

The judges for the competition are six expert analysts and investment managers from both the buy and sell sides of Wall Street equity investing. They are: Richard E. Cripps, CFA, chief market strategist, Legg Mason; Andrew J. Galligan Jr., CFA, director and analyst, TimesSquare Capital Management; William R. Gruver, visiting professor and distinguished executive in residence, Bucknell University, and former general partner and CAO, Goldman Sachs & Co. equities division; Judah S. Kraushaar, former sell-side analyst, Merrill Lynch, and a No. 1 ranked Institutional Investor money center bank analyst; Stephen A. Lanzendorf, CFA and principal, Independence Investments; and Peter A. Wright, founder, P.A.W. Partners, one of the largest U.S. hedge funds.

The format is as follows: Before the contest begins, students will train to use two computer-based equity research systems at the Parker Center -- FactSet, an online investment research service used by financial institutions worldwide, and Reuters StockVal, an equity analysis and portfolio management tool used globally by institutional investment firms. The contestants will then research and prepare three stock pitches for a preliminary and a final round. Each pitch will be no more than five minutes, plus an additional five to 10 minutes for questions from judges. In the preliminary round, teams will pitch two stocks, one common to all teams and one chosen at each team's discretion from an assigned industry.

"The Johnson School is thrilled to be the co-sponsor and host of this event," said Lee. "We believe stock analysis and presentation are vital skills for the new breed of analyst. Live teaching and live cases need to be an integral part of business schools' programs, particularly in the area of investment management."

The competition takes place under the auspices of the Parker Center, a hands-on teaching center for financial analysis. In addition to the Johnson School and NYSE, FactSet and StockVal are competition co-sponsors. For details, see this Web site: http://www.mbastockpitch.com/. For highlights the week after the event, see http://www.johnson.cornell.edu.