University students scoop £9,000 and £3,000 investment prizes

Financial education charity, the ifs School of Finance, announced that Maryann Hollebon an Open University student from Somerset, has won the 2007 ifs Uni Investor Challenge – collecting a top prize of £9,000.

Martin Conway a postgraduate student at Queens University, Belfast collected the £3,000 top prize for winning the postgraduate element of the competition.

The ifs Uni Investor Challenge is a two part challenge open to any University student in the UK. The Challenge is split into two categories – undergraduate and postgraduate - and involves investing a fantasy £100,000 over a three month period. The top 20 performing portfolio holders i.e. the University students who achieve the greatest growth over this three month period, then have to write an investment report detailing why they made the investment decisions they did.

Rod McKee, head of financial capability at the ifs School of Finance, said: “The ifs challenge helps students become more engaged with business, economics and the financial media as well as providing some practical experience in a risk-free environment. These two students have done tremendously well to outperform students from 100 HE institutions across the UK and their hard work has secured deserved rewards.”

Maryann said, “The investment challenge was thrilling, exciting and extremely rewarding! It certainly helped to broaden my limited knowledge of the financial world and helped me to make financial decisions about companies.

Postgraduate winner Martin Conway said, “All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the Uni-investor challenge. I have no doubt that I will be trading shares in the future and my experience gained in this competition will stand me in good stead. I would recommend it to any student regardless of academic background.”

Asked what they planned to do with their winnings both proved they have caught the investment bug.

Maryann said, “I plan to invest half of this money in shares…concentrating on dividend paying companies.” These were sentiments echoed by Martin who confirmed, “I am hoping to open a mini stock and shares ISA with the winnings.”