Marianopolis students have a new platform to showcase their analytical prowess and get hands-on experience in investment management.

The Lynx Global Biodiversity Pitch Competition – the flagship event of the Marianopolis Investment Management Program (MIMP) – allows students to present comprehensive stock pitches to industry professionals.

The competition is student-led initiative supported by Lester Asset Management’s Lynx Global Biodiversity Fund, the Marianopolis Social Science and Commerce faculty and The Marianopolis Millennium Foundation.

The particular focus of the competition is on companies that value long-term profitable investments while committing to protecting the environment, promoting sustainability, and addressing issues related to water and food security. It offers students a real-life immersion into the world of finance by helping them acquire skills and develop strategies applied to concrete investment scenarios.

The competition sees two teams of students work as analysts to prepare pitches with help from experienced alumni mentors who work in finance. Once the pitches are complete, the students/analysts present their finding to a jury made up of a group of senior professionals within the industry.

The mentors for the first edition of the event included alumni Christopher Kovalchuk ’13 (Claret Asset Management), Kristian Valenta ’08 (Continent 8 Technologies) and Simon Cinq-Mars ’15 (Valnet).

Marianopolis alumni Stephen Takacsy ’77 (Lester Asset Management), Lucas Pontillo ’93 (Fiera Capital, Vice-Chair of the Marianopolis Board of Governors) and Jiro E. Kondo (McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management) served as members of the jury.

This exclusive audience provided invaluable feedback, advice, and constructive reviews for students. It enhanced the quality of the stock pitches and offered students real-world insights and perspectives from professionals with broad experience in the financial sector.

“The interaction between students and industry professionals is a cornerstone of MIMP,” says economics professor Norma Vite-Leon, the Marianopolis faculty member who helped coordinate the creation of the pitch competition. “It really bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical applications, and prepares students for success in the field of finance.”

Judges left the inaugural competition highly impressed with the quality of pitches they heard from both teams and our student’s commitment to hands-on learning and ethical investing.

The team made up of graduating students Ethan Monk and Basil Bibik, and first-year students William Carvalho Guertin and Robert Leon was named the winner of the competition, despite strong performances from the team led by graduating students Bo-Rui Zhang and Danyl Satanovskyi, and first-year students Philip Peides and Alexander Paliotti.