March 25, 2002
Business Week Features McCombs Fund Managers in March 25th Education Issue
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AUSTIN, Texas - Congratulations to Doug Alder, MBA Class of 2002, and the fund managers of the MBA Investment Fund, L.L.C., for their recent appearance in Business Week. The March 25th edition featured Alder prominently in an article on choosing the best MBA program, "Answering the $150,000 Question: Which business school is the right one for you?"
Business Week's elite edition for March 25th also featured more detail on the McCombs MBA Investment Fund in an article titled "Fund Managers Before They Graduate: Some B-schools put real money in students' hands." The 650-word story ran with a photo of McCombs fund managers at work in the EDS Trading Center accompanied by the caption, "At McCombs, student funds are worth $12.5 million."
The elite edition, which featured the second story, is a special version of Business Week distributed only to high-income subscribers.
In the article on choosing an MBA, which appeared in the general edition, McCombs was featured along with Wharton, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. "Are you set on a particular career?" asked author Jennifer Merritt. "The key is to match your interest and goals with a school's offerings.
Consider the experience of Doug Alder, a former mechanical engineer at ExxonMobil. Knowing he wanted to work for an asset management firm after graduating, he chose the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin because of its student-managed investment fund. Alder applied with the hope of joining the fund's management team and later earned a spot as one of its managers. After he gets his degree this spring, the 28-year-old Alder will start a job with Fayez Sarofim & Co., a Houston investment firm.
Alder was the only student profiled at length in the article.
The story on fund managers, also written by Merritt, profiled student-run funds at McCombs and Cornell along with an investment club at Purdue's Krannert School of Business.
"Each fund tries to instill its own investment philosophies and strategies," wrote Merritt:
The $12.5 million MBA Investment Fund, consisting of a growth fund, a value fund, and a small piece of the endowment, at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business, is one of the largest MBA-run fund operations. Created in 1994 with money from private investors affiliated with the school, it aims to minimize risk.
These funds stick to a "disciplined approach on the sell side," always off-loading stocks when they reach a set target price. In the past year, the growth fund has struggled while the value fund has beaten its benchmark by about five percentage points, according to Keith Brown, a finance professor and president of the operation.
In addition to Keith Brown, McCombs School advisory board member Gary Crum, chief executive of AIM Capital Management, was featured in the article's lead. "When students come out of the [fund management] programs," said Crum, "they're at least a couple of years ahead of most other graduate students …. They're able to speak the language. They know how trading operations work.''
You can read the complete articles at business week online, but you will need to be a registered user, which in most cases requires a print subscription. Alternately, you can access them through the links above if you have a valid UTEID, or visit the MBA program office to see a copy of the March 25th edition featuring the Doug Alder interview, and -- when we get a copy -- the elite edition with the photo of the fund managers.
About McCombs
The McCombs School of Business is perennially ranked one of the top business schools in the country and world according to leading business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and U.S. News & World Report. With strength across the board in all major business disciplines, McCombs is especially known for innovative collaborations with industry and for leading programs in technology, entrepreneurship, finance, and accounting. McCombs offers a full range of business education programs, from BBA and full-time MBA to Part-time MBA, Executive MBA, Executive Education, PhD, and graduate accounting (PPA/MPA). Under new dean George W. Gau, the school has set a goal of becoming the top public business school in the nation.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
