Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Association of Pakistan successfully conducted the first local Investment and Research Challenge (IRC) in Pakistan. The IRC is an equity research competition among student teams from Pakistan's top universities' business and finance programmes. 2008-09 is the first year that CFA Pakistan is participating in the IRC.
Institute of Business Administration (IBA) team was announced as the winner of local IRC. IBA will move forward to participate in the regional IRC being held in Singapore in March 2009. All the leading universities were asked to nominate a team for participation in the Pakistan level IRC. Based on the extensive team interviews final four teams were selected. These were Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums), Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (Szabist) and Bahria University.
Each team had to write a research report on a publicly traded company and present its findings to an expert panel. The teams were judged on their written reports and the presentations, and a winner was selected. Throughout the competition leading investment professionals volunteered as mentors, judges and panellist. Each team was assigned one experienced person from the research industry as a mentor to guide them through the process.
Engro Chemical (Engro) was selected as the target company to conduct the research due to its shareholder friendly culture and access of the information. A detailed presentation was held by Engro to brief all the teams about the company. At the final stage, all the teams presented their investment case to a panel of judges, which included Farid Ahmed Khan, CFA Director Credit Suisse Pakistan; Farrukh Sabzwari, CEO KASB Securities; and Kaleem Aziz, Fund Manager Kairos Partner.
Each team was given 10 minutes to present their investment case followed by an additional 10 minutes Q&A session. Based on the combined scoring of graders and judges, IBA team was announced as the winner of local IRC. The event was attended by CFA members, candidates, university students and faculty members and other industry professionals.-PR