RBI Deputy Governor, Mr. Anand Sinha, enlightens students at Manthan'12 - Finance Summit held on 11th Feb'12

Manthan – 2012, The first edition of the finance summit of IIM Kashipur was held on Saturday, 11 February 2012. The event witnessed mix of eminent industry personalities from the feild of finance, academia and students on a platform to put forward their view on ‘Global financial crisis and impact on Indian businesses’.

Mr. Anand Sinha, Dy Governor, RBI delivered the keynote address. Dr. Devi Singh, mentoring director IIM Kashipur and Director IIM Lucknow and Mr. Saurabh Bhat, President and managing director, corporate finance, Yes Bank addressed the gathering. Veteran professionally from various banks such as Union Bank, State Bank, Yes Bank and IDBI Bank to name a few constituted the audience.

Opening the event, Dr. Devi Singh was enthusiastic about the event and appreciated the student’s keen thirst for knowledge and efforts towards organizing the event. Dr. Devi Singh opined upon the debt driven open ended growth strategy of the U.S. as having its own perils and one of the key causes of the financial crisis. He also mentioned that unless growth picks up, debt bonds are restructured and fiscal tightening is exercised, giving financial props will not go a long way towards mitigating the impacts of the financial crisis. For the students of the Institute looking forward to a career in finance, Dr. Singh underlined the significance of understanding the core economics behind the increasingly complex financial world.

Mr. Saurabh Bhat, in his address spoke richly on the impact of the global crisis on India’s Banking and SME sectors. Mr. Bhat mentioned the three channels of influence of the global crisis being the trade channel, the finance channel and the confidence channel. The impact of rupee volatility on SME’s was also iterated, which is specially magnified in the absence of liquidity and capital availability. “This is the right time for Indian industry to focus on renewable energy, since the prices of conventional fossil fuel based energy sources are going one way – up”, said Mr. Bhat.

Mr. Anand Sinha in his keynote address spoke extensively on the build up of the global crisis and its causes. “Artificially low interest rates and credit boom, aided by leverage and flawed credit risk transfer contributed to a lack of focus on systemic risk” said Mr. Sinha. Speaking directly to the students of finance, Mr Sinha mentioned the frailty of financial models and how they cannot incorporate the irrationality of human behaviour. 

“Confidence and perception are very important and form the basis of successful banking”, said Mr. Sinha. Mr. Sinha also provided a detailed and granular breakup of the financial crisis, its causes and impacts on India which proved to be a great value add for the students and guests from industry alike.

The keynote address was followed by corporate dinner with an electrifying level of interaction amongst the guests. Many students of the institute with entrepreneurial ambitions found priceless advice and words of wisdom from their interactions with the guests over dinner.

Many guests expressed their delight while attending the event, the first of its kind in the region, and affirmed their positive response and participation in such events organized by the institute going forward. 

Mr. Sinha's detailed speech given at IIM Kashipur was later published and can be found at http://www.bis.org/review/r120322b.pdf

Finance Club Organizes Sessions on Equity, Debt and Corporate Finance

The students at IIM Kashipur have developed quite an inclination towards the area of finance. Being taught a course on Financial Reporting and Analysis in the first term by one of the best faculty of IIM Lucknow- Prof Manoj Anand, the students got an opportunity to get a holistic view of the world of Finance which furthered their interest in the area. Keen towards enhancing their knowledge of finance through various initiatives, event and activities, a group of students got together and started the Finance Club – IIM Kashipur.

The fundamental belief of Finance Club has been that knowledge can be increased by sharing. This encouraged the Finance Club to start knowledge sharing sessions wherein some guys having knowledge in Finance by certifications like CFA, NCFM etc and past experience in the domain of finance started acquainting the batch with basic concepts from different areas of finance. After an initial session on the overview of financial markets, the Finance Club conducted sessions on Equity, Debt and Corporate Finance.

The session on Equity was conducted on 31^st August 2011 and the speakers were Pulkit Taluja, Ravikant Sharma and Varun Kumar Agarwal. In the four hour session, the speakers covered the topics: Basic Equity Concepts, Equity Trading, Stock Indices, Models of Equity Valuation, Key Financial Indicators related to Equity and Industry and Company Analysis. The questions asked by the participants made the session interesting and the team of speakers didn’t move ahead until the doubts of all the participants were cleared.

The session on Fixed Income was conducted on 5^th September 2011 and the speakers for the session were same as that in equity. Apurv Pandit, Editor – Pagalguy, also attended the session. It was a two hour session and topics that were covered are: Fixed Income Fundamentals, Fixed Income Markets, Fixed Income Instruments and Fixed Income Risks. The Finance Club plans to conduct another session on this topic to cover its breadth and depth.

The session on Corporate Finance was conducted on 22^nd November 2011 and the speakers were Abhishek Kamble and Pulkit Taluja. The topics covered were: Capital Budgeting, Cost of Capital, Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Leverage, Working Capital Management and Financial Statement Analysis. The knowledge of this subject is important from a manager’s point of view as it caters to various decision making problems and their evaluation criteria.

Some members of the finance club have also started taking independent projects the results of which we would share in the near future. 

Finance Club Organizes its First Knowledge Sharing Session

Finance Club - IIM Kashipur organized its first knowledge sharing session on 20^th July 2011. The agenda for the session was a basic overview of financial markets. The speakers were Ravikant Sharma, who has prior work experience with a hedge fund client, and Pulkit Taluja, who has cleared CFA Level 1 and has experience in finance domain. Both the speakers are first year students of the inaugural batch of IIM Kashipur. The session started at 6:00 pm after the end of all lectures scheduled for the day and ended at around 7:00 pm.

The session started on an interactive note with speakers asking the participants about their expectations from the session. The areas that the two speakers covered were classification of financial markets, players in the financial market with emphasis on investment banks, primary and secondary markets, trading and a bit on derivatives. The speakers kept clearing the doubts of the participants as and when they were raised during the session. The session ended with the speakers’ taking feedback from the participants.

Considering that it’s the first batch of the institute and there are no seniors around to guide the students, forming the Finance Club and conducting these sessions within three weeks of the start of the PGP programme is an appreciable effort by the vibrant student community of the institute. The Finance Club will continue to hold these sessions and delve deeper into the field of finance. Overall the event was well organized and the speakers did their best to meet the expectations of the participants.

   

Welcome to the Finance Club

This blog is an endeavor of members of IIM Kashipur's Finance Club to keep everyone posted about the happenings of the club.

We will also post articles that could help everyone understand various aspects of the field of finance. Apart from that we will communicate through this blog about the events and activities organized by the Finance Club.