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UFS team makes it to top four in CFA University Research Challenge

18 November 2020 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath | Photo Supplied

CFA CHALLENGE_web read more — The UFS team, from the left: Monique Harcourt, Dawid Potgieter, Atalanta Watson, and Zoe Travers.

One of two teams from the University of the Free State (UFS) performed exceptionally well and made it to the top four in the extremely competitive local Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) University Challenge.

The CFA Society South Africa recently hosted the 12th annual local edition of the CFA Institute University Research Challenge. The research challenge is an annual global competition in equity research hosted by the CFA Institute, a global representative body for chartered financial analyst (CFA) charter holders. During the research challenge, teams from different universities locally and internationally compete on three levels – more than 1 000 universities compete annually.

"Taking part in the CFA challenge was a wonderful opportunity where we learnt new skills and gained industry-specific experience, which will be invaluable to us as we graduate and embark on our journey as professionals. We are proud to have represented Kovsies in the finals and this proved to us, once again, that hard work pays off, " said the UFS team.

Two teams of four were selected to represent the UFS during the 2020 challenge. Team selection was based on students’ performance during the first semester of their BCom Honours (specialisation in Financial Economics and Investment Management) in the Department of Economics and Finance. During the challenge, students assumed the role of a (sell-side) research analyst and had to write a concise report that covered various aspects related to the company’s business activities, structure, governance, finances, etc., which was presented via Zoom to a panel of judges from the CFA Society South Africa.

Dr Ivan van der Merwe, the team’s adviser from the Department of Economics and Finance, commented: “It was a pleasure to work with a team that showed so much dedication and was willing to go the extra mile. The experience they gained during this challenge will stand them in good stead and it was a real confidence builder for them to successfully complete a very stressful live presentation and subsequent question session. They made us proud and set the standard for aspiring Finance students at Kovsies.”

News Archive

International human development practitioners gather at first HDCA conference in Africa

2017-09-18

The first HDCA annual conference on African soil was held at
UCT from 6 to 8 September 2017.

The Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) is a global community of academics and practitioners that seeks to build an intellectual community around the ideas of human development and the capability approach, and to relate these ideas to the policy arena and justice in the world. The association promotes research within many disciplines, ranging from economics to philosophy, development studies, health, education, law, government, sociology, and more. Members live in over 70 countries worldwide.

The HDCA’s conference is held annually; in 2017, the 17th international conference was held in Africa for the first time. Hosted by the Universities of Cape Town, the Free State (UFS), and the Western Cape, and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the meeting was held in Cape Town from 6 to 8 September 2017. The conference attracted outstanding global scholars, such as Profs Ravi Kanbur (Cornell), Martha Nussbaum (Chicago), Ingrid Robeyns (Utrecht), and Jayati Ghosh (Jawaharlal Nehru University), among many others.

The conference theme was Challenging Inequalities: Human Development and Social Change, a particularly apt topic in the wake of Stats SA’s latest Poverty Report, which shows growing poverty and inequality in South Africa. Prof Melanie Walker, Director: Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development (CRHED) at the UFS, outgoing vice-president of the HDCA, and a member of the conference committee, led a group of researchers from CRHED, ten of whom were involved in presenting papers, while two former PhD students also presented their research. Overall, the quality of papers was very high, with Prof Nussbaum remarking that this was ‘the best HDCA conference’ she had attended.

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