Congratulations to team SUSS Cecil Street Capital (CSC), comprising of Business Analytics and Finance students, Ezekiel Woo, Clara Ng, Timothy Hoon and Khor Chen Yang, for being crowned Champions and clinching the Best Report Prize at the 2023 Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Challenge.
SUSS students, Clara Ng, Ezekiel Woo, Timothy Hoon, and Khor Chen Yang, at the CFA Challenge.
The CFA Challenge is an annual global competition providing university students hands-on mentoring, intensive financial analysis, and professional ethics training. Students are tested on analytical, valuation, report writing, and presentation skills while gaining real-world experience as they assume the role of a research analyst.
The competition involved making an investment recommendation to industry veterans from leading financial institutions. Despite overwhelming street estimates of buy recommendations for Grab (NASDAQ: GRAB), the team boldly made a sell call. This resulted from thorough analyses of Grab’s total addressable market, competitive positioning and on-demand application demand and supply drivers.
CSC attributed their win to SUSS Investment Group (SIG)’s training and guidance, alongside support from their advisors. Timothy recounted, “SIG’s training prompted me to take multi-faceted approaches to valuation. Our mentors prompted us to make robust arguments yet consider counterfactuals.”
The team was also juggling full-time commitments and studies during the competition. Clara said, “We held many late-night meetings after evening classes and supported each other closely. It was indeed a tiring but fulfilling experience.” Last year’s CFA Ethics Challenge champion, Ezekiel, commented, “The team had wanted to win since 2022 – we went through many failures that helped us learn and grow.”
Despite this achievement, the team continues to push themselves to work harder. Chen Yang shared, “We are grateful for the immense support, but there’s a long road ahead. Now it’s time to improve, deliver the best, and make SUSS and Singapore proud.”
Congratulations once again to our students for winning this competition! The students will represent Singapore at the Sub-Regional Championships next month.