The morning of May 27, we experienced the “typical” New York City rush hour; it was crazy! We started with a visit to Standard & Poor’s (S&P) headquarters in Manhattan. The speakers kindly talked about what the rating agency does, what credit ratings entail, and elaborated on the process behind rating assessments. They further expanded our knowledge on public finance, how S&P adjusts its rating opinions, and how it reacts when emergency situations occur. Finally, the speakers focused on the changes and lessons learned after the Global Financial Crisis from the perspective of a credit agency. It was a very joyful and meaningful field trip.

In the afternoon, we traveled to Neuberger Berman (NB), a private, employee-owned investment management firm also based in New York. We were honored to spend two hours with Chief Financial Officer William Arnold and a couple of specialists from different departments of the firm. They gave us a brief introduction to NB and how it became an employee-owned firm from a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. Also, they mentioned the loyalty of the employees, which is a difference-maker compared with other corporations; we were highly impressed. Successively, they shared their opinions on challenges in the industry of mutual funds; talked about their municipal bond portfolios; and the role of active versus passive investment management. We also got some interesting insight on the life of an employee before and after the Lehman collapse, which is not an ordinary story for a student to hear.

To conclude such a productive and enriching day, we ventured through NYC traffic once more (this time by car) in order to meet Bob Eick of Waterfall Asset Management and Nick Verbitsky, film producer and Emmy Award winner. Mr. Eick introduced us to the ins and outs of a credit-focused hedge fund, briefly explained how his fund quantifies risk, and the markets in which it participates – often property sold by banks. The following Q&A allowed us to learn more about Mr. Eick on a personal level and about his view on failure, which according to him, shapes people into better professionals.

Documentary on insider trading was shown on the PBS program Frontline in January 2014.

Finally, we were also exposed to the film/documentary industry thanks to the talk by Mr. Verbitsky and got a chance to view one of his films – “To Catch a Trader” – while also enjoying some pizza and refreshments. The day was incredible and we’re excited about our next learning opportunities in the upcoming days.

Guest Bloggers: Marco Iachini, Xinran (Joy) Chen, Shibo (April) Yu (GMF 2015)

This is the seventh in a series of 10 blogs chronicling the experiences of 31 Global Master of Finance (GMF) dual degree students during their two week long immersion course in Washington, DC and New York. Each blog will be written by a small subset of students during their experience.

Image: NYC Subway, Flickr, Creative Commons, Satish Krishnamurthy