Bissett Stock Market Competition 2020 Winners Announced
Jim Fischer, Bisset Associate Professor of Finance, has announced the much anticipated results of the annual Bissett Stock Market Challenge:
The team of Varune Tillekeratne, Jamal Hussaini and Bidzina Mosiashvili has won the 2019-2020 Bissett Stock Market Competition with a stunning return of 78%.
The 14th edition of the annual competition began in September 2019 and concluded March 31, 2020. This year 14 teams of three students each started the competition with $1,000,000 in virtual money. Through the use of a simulator, they traded in Canadian and US markets, with the ability to sell short and use options. This year was characterized by five months of trading in what would become the end of the longest bull market in history, followed by a month that witnessed the quickest decline into a bear market in history. The TSX Composite Index ended the same time period down 20%.
The winners claim a record of their own. They beat the market by the highest margin achieved by a team since the competition started in 2005. The previous record was made in 2009 by the team of Nicole Rumley, Owen Watson and Brandon Thomson. That team posted a return of 25% when the market indexes were down 35% over the same time period, reeling in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
The winners will be presented with the trophy for the competition at a future date, when university operations return to normal.
Bissett would like to congratulate the winners and all participants as well as extend a thank you to Jim Fischer for his continued mentorship of the students and the running of this competition; not only an impactful learning experience, but a rite of passage for many of our finance students!
Four Bissett Finance students receive scholarships from the Risk Management Association scholarship program!
Congratulations to our four Bissett School of Business students who have received RMA scholarships for the 2019-20 academic year! Then recipients are Angelique Develle, Mohsen Esmaili, Alex Campbell and Luke McKinlay.
Learn more about RMA’s Academic Program initiatives, including The Foundation Scholarship and free RMA Student Membership, on their Student Resource Center website.
Bissett finance professor, Tashfeen Hussain has research papers accepted for publication
Congratulations to Tashfeen Hussain,PhD, for having his research recognized. The first paper titled, Total productivity and cost efficiency dynamics of US merging banks: a non-parametric approach (Jaml Ali, PhD; Nacuer Essadam, PhD, and Tashfeen Hussain, PhD), has been accepted to the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance.
Abstract: This paper investigates the productivity characteristics and cost efficiency dynamics of US acquiring banks over the period from 1992 to 2003. The findings show that large merging banks tend to have the same productivity scores compared to their peer banks. Small merging banks, on the other hand, experienced lower productivity than their peers. The source of the acquirers’ productivity seems to be the efficiency change rather than the frontier shift. Cost efficiency results show that small and large merging banks maintained higher cost efficiencies over their peers for the whole period motivated by higher technical efficiency scores, meaning that the large acquirers’ ability to maximize their outputs given fixed inputs is best relative to merging and non-merging banks of different sizes. The principal component analysis of the cost efficiency sub-components indicate that the merging banks principal cost efficiency components are mainly of technical and pure technical efficiencies but after the merger, allocative efficiency increased substantially at the expense of technical and pure technical efficiencies, while the peer banks cost efficiency remained totally dependent on technical and pure technical efficiencies.
Also, Tashfeen has recently presented his working paper, titled, Do credit default swaps impact lenders’ monitoring of loans? at the Academy of Economics and Finance Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. Tashfeen received FDC funding to attend the conference.
Congratulations Tashfeen, the faculty looks forward to more of your research.
Chair and finance professor, Reza Chowdhury has papers accepted for publication
Abstract: By using individual-level survey data from 97 countries, we investigate the effect of informal institutions on external financing and its impact on entrepreneurship. We find that a culturally-driven entrepreneurial environment allows entrepreneurs to obtain more debt, equity, and venture capital financing, and this, in turn, increases entrepreneurial activities. We further find that a culturally-driven entrepreneurial environment is more critical in determining entrepreneurship than formal institutional arrangements (such as investor protection). Our results provide evidence that cross-country variations in entrepreneurship can be explained by differences in cultural support to new venture financing across countries.
Abstract: The objective of this article is to investigate the moderating role of national-based cultural attributes in the relationship between brand value and firm value. This article examines the topic in the context of different national cultural dimensions, including individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, power distance, and long-term orientation. We use brand values of the Financial Times’s Global 500 companies and national cultural values reported by Hofstede, GLOBE, and Schwartz. Results exhibit that brands are more value-additive to companies in highly individualistic cultures. In addition, a valuable brand contributes more to firm value in low uncertainty avoidant, high masculine, low power distant, and short-term oriented cultures.National cultural attributes are therefore important determinants in explaining the magnitude by which highly valued brands contribute to the firm value of the companies that own the respective brands. The evidence suggests that while a valuable brand contributes to firm value, the level of its effect on firm value varies by distinctive characteristics of each national cultural dimension.
Bissett professor Jim Fischer busy mentoring students in the annual Stock Market Competition and with his research projects
Bissett professor Tashfeen Hussain active in various research projects
Bissett School of Business congratulates Assistant Professor, Tashfeen Hussain for being selected to contribute a chapter to the upcoming book titled, “Corporate Fraud Exposed”. The title of the chapter that Tashfeen will be writing is “The Spillover Impact of Corporate Fraud on Peer Firms”. The selection process has been quite intensive. The book will be edited by Dr. Kent Baker, Dr. Lynnette Purda and Dr. Samir Saadi. The book will be published by Emerald Publishing. Tashfeen expects to have the final draft of the chapter ready by June, 2020. The book is intended to be used at PhD programs in Finance.
As part of the faculty’s Apaat tsi kani takiiks initiative, Tashfeen and Associate Professor Allan Dwyer have had their proposal approved for developing a teaching case focusing on indigenous related issues. The focus of the case will be “Estimating the cost of capital for an indigenous business and evaluating strategies to reduce the cost of capital”.
“The Apaat tsi kani takiiks project is an initiative from Bissett School of Business and the School of Communications that aims to produce and promote Indigenous-centered curriculum and programming for the next generation of leaders, working to increase access to education for Indigenous students in an attempt to address reconciliation. The three-year initiative began in May 2017 as a continuation of the Suncor Aboriginal Business Education pilot project”. – MRU Media
2nd Annual MRU RMA Commercial Lending Case Competition was a huge success
The Risk Management Association of Alberta, in conjunction with the MRU Financial Student Organization (FSO) hosted the second edition of the MRU RMA Alberta Commercial Lending Case Competition this past September. The competition is modeled after RMA competitions held in the United States and MRU is currently the only western Canadian University to offer a case competition in this format.
Building upon the success of last year’s inaugural event, the organizers were happy to report a 40% increase in student involvement for this year. This year’s competition seen 10 teams comprised from 38 Bissett BBA student participants plus six student volunteers to handle the logistics throughout the event. There were also nineteen RMA commercial credit professional-executives and ten faculty and senior management members in attendance. Each of the teams were provided with a dedicated industry mentor to give individualized advice on their analysis.
“It was an outstanding few days of learning, mentor-ship and networking! ” – Cathy Roy-Heaton
Each team was evaluated on their written and oral summary, identification of key risks, mitigation of risks, key ratio and financial analysis of the case, as well as their ability to professionally and concisely communicate their findings and defend their recommendations. The teams were extremely competitive as all ten teams placed within 15% of the first place team and there was only 1.2% differential between the 1st and 3rd placed team!
“Many of the students thanked me for the opportunity to be engaged in this experience. No question this is at the heart of what we stand for in the Bissett School of Business. Thank you for making this an impactful learning experience for our students” – Dean, Elizabeth Evans
Bissett Assistant Professor, Tashfeen Hussain completes oral defense for his PhD
Congratulations to Assistant Professor Tashfeen Hussain who recently completed his oral defense of his thesis! Tashfeen’s thesis has been approved without revision through the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University. The title of the thesis: “Implications of firms’ interactions with debt markets”.
Tashfeen has also been selected to write a chapter on an upcoming book on Corporate fraud. The chapter is titled: “The spillover impact of corporate fraud”.
Bissett Finance Professor Osama El-Temtamy has paper accepted to conference in Greece
Bissett School of Business would like to congratulate Osama El-Temtamy on having his paper accepted for presentation at the the 7th Spring Conference of the Multinational Finance Society in Chania, Crete, Greece in April 2019. Osama’s paper is entitled: Oil Price Plunge: Are Conventional and Islamic banks equally vulnerable?
Abstract:
“Oil Price Plunge: Are Conventional and Islamic Banks Equally Vulnerable?”
Ghulame Rubbaniy – Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Osama El-Temtamy – Mount Royal University, Canada
A. W. Khan – University of Evansville, USA
Abida Perveen – Comsats University Islamabad, Pakistan
In response to the recent debate on the vulnerability of the banking industry to oil price plunge, this article investigates the effect of oil price plunge on credit and insolvency risks of banking industry at aggregate level, across banks’ specializations and at country level. Our findings show that falling oil prices significantly increase the credit risk for the banking industry in the GCC region and particularly for banks operating in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates; however, falling oil prices do not affect credit risk of Islamic banks. Our analysis shows that black gold’s price plunge does not increase the insolvency risk of GCC banking industry nor across bank specializations and across Gulf countries using both accounting-based and market-based proxies of insolvency risk. We argue that bailout packages by the wealth funds to the GCC banks is a probable reason for counter intuitive protection against solvency risk due to negative oil price shocks.
Bissett CFA Ethics Team has won again!
For the second year in a row, the Bissett School of Business team has won the CFA Societies of Canada Ethics Challenge regional round! The Bissett team beat out teams from the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge and SAIT.
The Bisset team will advance to Nationals which are to be held in Calgary this coming May. Representing the Prairies Region, they will compete against the top schools from the other Canadian regions: BC, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
The Bissett team is comprised of Aliza Carrol (BBA – Financial Services 2020, Houston Higgins (BBA – Financial Analysis 20190, Gurdit Khatra (BBA – Financial Analysis 2019), Alaina Magnusson (BBA -Financial Analysis 2020) and Allana White (BBA – Finacial Analysis 2020).
As faculty advisor, Bissett Professor Cathy Roy-Heaton would like to mention how proud she is of their efforts and the quality of their analysis of a very complex governance -ethical scenario.
Their success is a direct reflection of the quality of our Finance program! Congratulations Team!
