CFA Association (Russia) has taken part in CFA Institute Research Challenge (IRC) for the third time this year. CFA IRC is an educational initiative that promotes best practices in equity research among the next generation of analysts.

The students of leading economics and finance universities from around the world undertake analytical valuation, prepare detailed reports and present on one public company in their region. Last year more than 3,000 students from over 650 universities, 89 businesses, and 106 societies in 55 countries and territories participated in the 2011-2012 CFA Institute Research Challenge.

This year the winners of the local competitions will be taking part in the world final competition in London on 12th of April 2013.

Each year CFA (Russia) invites leading public companies to participate in CFA IRC in the role of the subject company. This year the subject company for the Russian leg of the competition was OJSC Mostotrest. Mostotrest is a leading Russian infrastructure construction company with diversified business model and extensive geographic coverage. Mostotrest has its footprint in most of the market segments including construction and renovation of bridges (key segment with a 25% market share), roads, railways, airports and other transport infrastructure facilities.

Judges asking questions to the presenting team

Six teams actively participated in Russian CFA IRC competition and only four teams made it to the final stage of the local Research Challenge this year. The final step of the local competition took place on 12/03/2013 at the KPMG Moscow office. It has become a good tradition for KPMG Moscow and CFA Association (Russia) to hold the opening kick-off meeting and final of the CFA IRC together. There was structural change to submission of the presentations this year. All participating teams provide video recording of their presentations and judges could access these presentations via YouTube. This change allowed easier access to the Challenge for regional teams who previously had to travel to Moscow to deliver these presentations to the judges.

The following four Universities made it to the final:

Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics

Moscow State University

New Economic School

National Research University Higher School of Economics

After delivering four strong presentations, responding to the complex questions of the judges and careful consideration, the team of the Moscow State University was announced the winner of local stage of CFA Institute Research Challenge.

We would like to thank our graders that reviewed reports and video presentations submitted by all teams:

Alexander Golovtsov
Alexander Semeyko
Dmitry Dorofeev
Dmitry Kontorshchikov
Maxim Kondratiev
Marina Shestakova
Maxim Russkih
Olga Bystrova
Olga Zagvozdkina
Vitaly Kolegov

and also big thank you to the judges that had a difficult choice of selecting the winner:

Denis Sitnikov
Mikhail Panfilov
Pavel Panasov

The winning team of the Moscow State University (MSU) will be preparing for the Regional Final with assistance of professionals of finance and banking industries. The team will receive constructive feedback from the judges of the local competition who reviewed team’s report and presentation. The MSU team will also be given coaching on presentation skill in English language that should help the team in the regional competition.

Winners of the Russian CFA IRC

We wish good luck to the winning team in their next regional competition in London!

Photographs of the event are available here