Finance Newsletter – Summer 2020

Spring Finance Career Fair and Panel Discussion

The Finance and Managerial Economics Area partnered with the Program in Public and Nonprofit Management in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences to co-host a Public and Private Financial Sector Employer Panel and Recruitment Fair on Jan. 31 in the Jindal School.

Thirteen companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Charles Schwab Corporation, State Farm and others, joined the recruitment fair in the morning. All the companies brought in both internship and full-time job opportunities for students. Half the participating companies indicated they would provide Curricular Practical Training (CPT) and/or Optional Practical Training (OPT) sponsorships, which are employment options important to international students. In all, 150 students representing 31 majors attended the fair. About half the students who attended were BS or MS in Finance majors.

Five panelists from companies that included the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and State Farm talked about hiring trends and shared their insights on future skills that will be needed in finance.

Entrepreneur and Brand Builder Speaks at Weitzman Institute Event

On March 5 at the Jindal School, Ray Hemmig, founder and manager of Retail & Restaurant Growth Capital and Hemmig Investments Ltd., shared insights from his nearly 50-yeer career as part of the Herbert D. Weitzman Executive Speaker Series.

The series is hosted by the Herbert D. Weitzman Institute for Real Estate at JSOM, which provides scholarships, training and financial assistance to real estate students. The event was co-sponsored by the UT Dallas Real Estate Club.

After starting his career with JCPenney in 1972, Hemmig joined Hickory Farms of Ohio, ACE Cash Express, Restoration Hardware, Grandy’s, On the Border, Buffet Partners, Snappy Salads and Party City.

He condensed some things he learned at those companies into individual points that he called “learnings,” including:

• Be curious and observant. “At Hickory Farms, I watched and learned how to be the best in sales,” he said. One lesson came when the company decided to put kiosks in the malls where their stores were located during the holidays. The kiosks proved to be extremely popular with holiday shoppers.
• Focus on customer satisfaction. “It’s the right thing to do. If you take care of the customer, everything else takes care of itself.”
• When negotiating a tenant/landlord agreement, it must be good for both parties.
• Outsourcing is a great tool for filling in the gaps.
• Never stop learning.

JSOM alumnus Clayton Fitchett, who graduated in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, attended the talk as part of his research into new career opportunities. “I’ve always been interested in real estate,” he said, “and since I was recently laid off, I have some time to consider new options. This program provided some useful information.”

Another guest, Rusty Bjorkman, agency finance, PNC Real Estate, graduated from JSOM in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. “Even though I don’t work directly in real estate, my work is related to real estate,” he said. “This topic was a good one for me.”

Dr. Randall S. Guttery, director of the Herbert D. Weitzman Institute for Real Estate, said about 30 people stayed for about an hour after the event, talking with JSOM Dean Hasan Pirkul and Hemmig, a member of the UT Dallas Executive Board and past chairman and ongoing member of the Jindal School’s advisory council.

“The students don’t often get that kind of opportunity,” Guttery said. “And it was great for them to be able to hear from someone like Ray Hemmig, who came from humble financial beginnings and became incredibly successful.”

COVID-19 Response in the Finance Area

Although COVID-19 has presented us all with enormous and unprecedented challenges, UT Dallas Comets have reacted and adjusted very well to this global health crisis. The following stories highlight how the faculty, staff and students in the Finance Area responded to COVID-19 in the spring semester.

Finance Lab Goes Virtual

The Finance Lab had three new Bloomberg terminals installed in March. Another nine terminals will be installed by the end of this year. Thanks to the contract that made this possible, finance students now are able to join the Bloomberg Experiential Learning Partner (ELP) program virtually. The ELP program recognizes academic institutions that are leaders in experiential learning by integrating Bloomberg terminal exercises into their curricula. The program enables students to gain hands-on experience with the investment markets through access to real-time investment data, analytical tools and trading simulations. All these help students to be much better prepared for the real world of investment analysis and management.

Since mid-March, as a result of COVID-19, all of UT Dallas shifted to virtual learning formats. In response to the changes, the ELP program started offering free Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC) web access, which will continue until the University resumes regular classroom practices. Students can send a BMC request email to the Finance Lab, and student employees there will help them register for a BMC account.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, the Finance Lab moved all its services online. Student employees took shifts on a daily basis to continuously provide lab database and finance course tutoring sessions in a virtual format.

Usually, when the semester ends, lab student employees and faculty have a gathering to congratulate graduating students and recognize the exceptional student employee service. When the finance lab closed at the end of this extraordinary spring semester, lab workers celebrated by sharing messages in this video.

Trading lab manager and MS in Finance student Rushab Kachhara expressed the sentiments of many when he said, “As we come to the end of the semester, I would like to thank each and every one of you for the constant support and encouragement. It was one of the best times while working in the lab.”

Finance Class Contests Move Online, Students Don’t Skip a Beat

Moving all spring 2020 classes online amid the COVID-19 pandemic posed great challenges to both faculty and students, but students participating in Dr. Christian von Drathen’s corporate finance contests adapted and successfully endured.

Student group contests are a famed feature of von Drathen’s graduate courses. Year after year, students give enthusiastic feedback after participating in the competitions.

During the final week of April, both the UTD Investment Banking Valuation Contest, for Financial Modeling for Valuation (FIN 6352), and the UTD Buyout Contest, for Private Equity Finance (FIN 6316), were held successfully on UTD’s Blackboard Collaborate platform.

Von Drathen, an assistant professor of finance, assigned students to teams of four in January. For the remainder of the term, those teams evaluated a corporate finance transaction for a publicly listed firm. For the Valuation Contest, each group analyzed a current real-world mergers-and-acquisitions transaction and valued the deal. For the Buyout Contest, the student groups identified suitable leveraged buyout targets and structured a potential transaction.

To accommodate the virtual shift, the teams’ prerecorded their analyses and recommendations and presented them online to a jury of external corporate finance executives from Ernest & Young, Generational Equity, Hicks Capital Partners, Houlihan Lokey, ORIX Corporation, A Simple Model and Telos Capital Advisors. The jury selected a winner and a runner-up and presented trophies (affectionately named “tombstones”) to each team member.

“The project was challenging, and many times we questioned whether our efforts would be in vain,” said Ted Yu, a May MS in Finance graduate. “Through exhaustive iteration, we perfected our project and presentation up until the last day. Our hard work was rewarded, and we took first place.”

Not only that, the project became the centerpiece of his application to Zacks Investment Research. “When asked specifically for examples of finance-centric writing, the project was exactly what I submitted — I got the job!” Yu, now a biotech equity analyst for Zacks, happily reported, “While a graduate degree is what you make of it, I can say with confidence that the Master’s in Finance program at the UT Dallas Jindal School of Management is a challenging yet supportive program.”

Through it, he added, “I gained a rigorous foundation for a future in finance.”

Both contests were recorded and are available for viewing. View the Buyout Contest. View the Valuation Contest.

2020 Spring Semester Virtual Graduation Celebration

Given the campus closure due to COVID-19 and students completing the semester in online classes, spring graduation ceremonies were postponed until the campus can reopen and safely return to normal activities.

While nothing can replace commencement, the MS in Finance program office held a virtual graduation celebration for 50 spring 2020 MS in Finance graduates. Dr. Monica Powell, the Jindal School’s senior associate dean; Dr. Harold Zhang, the Finance and Managerial Economics Area coordinator; Dr. Carolyn Reichert, the MS in Finance program director; and other finance faculty members all included their congratulatory messages to the students during the virtual celebration.

View the MS in Finance Program Virtual Graduation Celebration.