Winners of investment education project

Winners of Bank of Valletta's Investment Education Project were awarded during a prize-giving ceremony held at the BoV centre in St Venera. The team who performed best was Kaizen made up of Charles Abela, Nicholas Ellul, Blayne Camilleri, Tyrone Mizzi and Robert Zammit. The team Cube placed second and Sapphire third.

Seventeen teams made up of five or six banking and finance students participated in the project, which consisted of simulating real life investment management. Each team was provided with a virtual sum of a million euros, which they invested in listed stocks, shares or bonds worldwide, using BoV's Virtual Portfolio Platform.

This is a feature on the bank's Internet banking service, allowing users to track and monitor investments and calculate profits and losses on their capital according to market fluctuations.

Charles Borg, chief officer, Financial Markets and Investments at BoV, presented certificates and cash to the winners. He was accompanied by Prof. Joseph Falzon of the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Malta, and by Prof. Ted Gardner, who currently holds the BoV chair in international banking at the University. Addressing the students, Mr Borg said: "BoV is keen to promote academic excellence among local students. Education features as one of the main pillars of the bank's community programme.

Each year, the bank gives back a percentage of its profits back to the community in which it operates through the support of tangible projects in the fields of art and culture, heritage, environment, society, sports, education and business."

Prof. Falzon explained that it was not only the final value of the investment that determined the winners. The investment strategy, portfolio management and the ultimate liquidation had a weighting on the final result. The monitoring of movements in the portfolio of each team was made by the stockbroking arm of BoV.

"Although trading took place virtually, students were given the opportunity to experience real life trading through the platform, the same one used in live trading."

At the presentation, Atanas Belyovski and Kyle Debono were presented with the BoV Prize in Finance for achieving top marks in their fourth year (Hons) course in Banking and Finance.

Charles Abela and Steve Ellul were presented with Best Dissertation prizes. Katrina Buhagiar and Marie Claire Bonnici were also awarded the Malta Stock Exchange and the Central Bank of Malta best dissertation prizes respectively.