UNYP students win Czech round of the 2020 CFA Institute Research Challenge

The University of New York in Prague would like to congratulate the UNYP and Empire State College team on winning the Czech round of the prestigious CFA Institute Research Challenge 2020! The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that provides university students with an opportunity to gain real-world experience in financial analysis and professional ethics. We also want to wish our team – Daniela Valsová, Megi Domi, Brandon Britto, David Voráček, Leonardo Barni, and their mentor, Tanweer Ali (Lecturer with SUNY Empire State College) – the best of luck for the next round of the challenge, which takes place in Jordan at the beginning of April. 

For this article, we spoke to team mentor Professor Tanweer Ali and team leader Daniela Valsová. 

In your opinion, what is the main advantage that UNYP students have in the CFA Challenge?

Tanweer Ali: “This is the fifth time that a team representing UNYP and Empire State College has won the Czech round of the CFA Institute Research Challenge. The competition has been held in the Czech Republic for ten years now, which means that our students have won exactly 50% of the victories. In my opinion, our students’ biggest advantages are their motivation and team spirit, combined with the emphasis that UNYP and ESC place on developing strong writing and presentational skills.”  

Could you please briefly describe your career? How did you get involved in the organization of the CFA Challenge? 

Tanweer Ali: “I worked in the financial sector for over ten years. In 2003 I started to teach at UNYP, initially thinking that it would be a short break from the corporate world, but I guess I landed in my ideal job. For a few years (2005-2008) I relocated to New York, and at that point I transitioned from UNYP to SUNY Empire State College. I work with ESC students in Prague as well as other locations.”

How did you organize this year’s team? 

Daniela Valsová: “With the help of Tanweer and the previous year’s team, I started organizing the team members a few months before we were supposed to register. All us study or have studied Business Administration at UNYP. I was striving to create a very diverse team, and we ended up very multicultural, representing India, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Albania. Our differences helped us, because we had a mix of people who are extremely structured and people who are more creative and come up with big ideas. When you put us together, we can derive what values we need perfectly. For the next round, we will be representing the Czech Republic at the international level in Jordan. We cannot adjust our report further, but we can still work on our presentation. This will be truly challenging, as the students participating in these competitions are often graduate students.” 

Could you please briefly describe your competition assignment? 

Daniela Valsová: “We were assigned to conduct research and do a valuation of Microsoft. Microsoft is a big corporation, and there is a lot of public access information on that company. However, because of the company’s size, it was very challenging to analyze all of the necessary aspects. We were assigned two mentors, Tanweer Ali from the university, and Lukáš Brych (Assistant Director at Financial Advisory Services at Deloitte) from the industry, and we had both of them guiding us the whole time. Both mentors helped us throughout the process, but indirectly – they can’t tell you precisely what to do. For example, we would form some theories and then meet with them to discuss the direction in which we were going to conduct our research. Sometimes Tanweer and Lukas would disagree, and our team would have to find a compromise between the two viewpoints. Our mentors both helped us a lot with preparing for the actual presentation, as did the other professors and professionals.

We worked with public sources such as annual reports, and we were also given access to the Thomson Reuters Eikon database, which is a massive database of companies and financial information. We had two months – November and December – to finish the report, meeting 2-3 times a week and then daily as the deadline grew closer, discussing all the areas of research covered by different members of the team. Brandon, Leonardo, and David took care of the financial side, while Megi and I did the business side – corporate governance, strategic positioning, and looking into specific products and their positioning within the market. The guys did financial models, valuation risk analysis, sensitivity, and peer comparison.”

Would you recommend that future generations of UNYP students participate in this competition? 

Daniela Valsová: “I would recommend the CFA Institute Research Challenge to third and fourth-year bachelor’s students, because they already have enough expertise for the project. You should only join when you know that you will be able to dedicate yourself entirely. We learned a lot, and even if we hadn’t won this time, we still would have considered the experience very beneficial. It is a whole new level of learning and research, and a rare opportunity to present your work to professionals from banks and investment companies.”