Smith School Team Earns Second Place in MBA Stock Pitch Challenge

A three-man team from the Smith School wowed portfolio managers and stock analysts at Cornell Universitys Johnson School of Managements fifth annual MBA Stock Pitch Challenge. The event was held November 3, 2006 at the Parker Center for Investment Research in Ithaca, NY.

Team members were second-year, full-time MBA students Christopher Mandozzi, Harold (Tray) Spilker and Christopher Van Horn. The team tied for second place a first-ever for the competition with the team from the University of Virginias Darden School. The winning team received $3000 and $1500 went to the second place winners. The first-place team was from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. Other finalists included Columbia, Chicago and Rochester.

This was a great accomplishment for us and great recognition of Smiths finance program, said Christopher Van Horn. Judges and recruiters told us that no other team worked better together or presented as well. Were proud of that.

Eleven teams overall, which applied in advance and were selected to take part in the competition, participated in the event. Teams made buy or sell recommendations in front of a team of Wall Street analysts from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, UBS, State Street Global Advisors, and Wellington Management.

The team from Kellogg suggested buying DR Horton (DHI), a homebuilder based in Fort Worth, TX. Darden recommended a buy for Pulte Homes (PHM) and Smith suggested shorting or selling Pulte Homes. In past years, Stock Pitch winners have made recommendations that outperformed the overall market.

Larry Rakers, vice president and portfolio manager for Fidelity Investments had this to say about competitors: "All the teams did a great job this year. They presented professional quality analysis similar to what I see in my firm. What set the winners apart was their solid analysis, and they pitched it convincingly."

Teams came from around the country to participate, including: Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), Columbia University, Cornell University (Johnson), Duke University (Fuqua), Dartmouth University (Tuck), New York University (Stern), Northwestern University (Kellogg), University of Chicago, University of Maryland (Smith), University of Michigan, University of Rochester (Simon) , and the University of Virginia (Darden).

▓ Susannah Campbell, MBA Candidate 2007, Smith Media Group