Center for Financial Markets
Mission
The IIT Stuart Center for Financial Markets has as its mission the enhancement of the public understanding of modern financial markets, especially organized markets such as stock exchanges and derivatives exchanges worldwide.
Institutional Home
The Center is a part of the Stuart School of Business, one of the schools of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Center Activities
In order to accomplish its mission, the Center is engaged in several activities: publishing, training, planning an oral history, mentoring students in portfolio management, running a speaker series, and educating executives in Latin America.
Publishing
In 2006, IIT entered into a joint venture with the international publishing company, Elsevier, to publish a serious of books on financial markets. Center director, Michael Gorham is the Series Editor and is responsible for sourcing the books. The books are branded Elsevier/IIT Center for Financial Markets Series. The first two books are:
• India's Financial Markets by Ajay Shah, Susan Thomas and Michael Gorham, published July 2008.
• The Dramatic, Global Transformation of the Modern Exchange by Michael Gorham and Nidhi Singh, publication expected October 2008.
Oral Histories
A second project, currently in the planning stages, is the creation of an oral history of the Chicago financial derivatives markets. The modern financial derivatives markets began in the early to mid-1970s at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Eventually financial derivatives spread to New York and London and then to trading centers throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. The purpose of the project is to capture the voices of those who were present at and involved in the creation of these globally important markets. These key players will explain how and why various decisions were made in the heat of the battle and share their reflections on the continuing evolution of these markets. The tapings would be posted on the Center's website (with the originals archived in the IIT Downtown Library). This would allow scholars, market participants, journalists, students and the interested public to search for those topics or individuals in which or whom they were interested. This is a project that is still in the planning stages, and funding has not yet begun.
Mentoring Students in Portfolio Management
In 2006, two students, one from India and the other from the US, collaborated with Center faculty to create a new student-run equity fund called Stuart Investments. Initially funded at about $4,000, made up of small donations from faculty and students, SI served to ensure that students interested in portfolio management had an opportunity to obtain hands-on experience. In 2007 the club was entrusted to manage $250,000 of the University's Endowment Fund. Keith Black was SI's first faculty advisor. Greg Chaudoin is the current faculty advisor.
Training
Drawing upon the full-time and adjunct faculty in the finance programs of Stuart, the Center offers a small number both customized and standardized training programs. These include: Introduction to Financial Markets for IT Professionals, Excel for Traders, MatLab for Traders, Network Technology for Traders, and Bayesian Analysis for Traders.
Speakers
The Center puts on a series of talks and panel discussions by executives from the financial industry. Past speakers have included:
• Michael Frankel, an M&A attorney and author of three M&A books, giving a three-hour workshop on the mergers and acquisitions process
• William Hederman, the Director of Market Oversight at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on troubles in the energy market
• Richard Dufour, Executive Vice President of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, on competition among exchanges
• Timothy Greening, senior analyst at Fitch Ratings, on issues in the credit rating business
• Nicholas Ronalds, Senior Vice President at ABN AMRO on the marketing and use of derivatives by financial institutions
• Galen Burghardt, research head at Calyon Financial, on designing new debt derivatives
• Stefano Cavaglia, an executive from UBS, on investing in global equities
• Jack McInerney, of the Illinois Finance Authority, on municipal securities
• Wang Xue Qin, Chief Economist from Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange, on Chinese derivatives markets
• Ashish Chauhan, Chief Information Officer from Reliance Industries (the largest company in India), on Indian derivative markets and Reliance's activities
Training Financial Executives in Latin America
Since 2007, finance faculty associated with the Center has taught 20% of an executive MS in Finance program at ICESI, a top-ranked university in Cali, Colombia. The other 80% of the program is taught by the ICESI faculty. The students are finance executives from companies and government entities from the greater Cali region.
History
In 1998, the Center for Law and Financial Markets was initially created to house several academic programs -- an MS in Financial Markets, an MS in Market Compliance and an LLM in Financial Services Law. The Center was created and initially run by John A. (Jack) Wing, former Chairman of Chicago Corp and of ABN AMRO Inc. In 2003, the Center was moved from the Chicago Kent College of Law to the Stuart School of Business, leaving the legal programs in the law school, dropping "Law" from the Center's name and moving an MS in Finance program into the Center. By 2006, the Center was administering three academic programs -- an MS in Financial Markets, an MS in Finance, and a Masters in Mathematical Finance. By 2007, the academic programs began to be administered independently from the Center, and the Center began to focus its attention on the other activities mentioned above.
Staff
Michael Gorham, Industry Professor of Financial Markets, is the director of the IIT Stuart Center for Financial Markets.
