Detailed Guidelines for Investment Strategy
Provide a two page executive summary of your proposal and a PowerPoint deck of no more than 15 slides.
Executive Summary (2 pages maximum):
Provide a written description of your investment strategy. Be sure to address the key issues raised in the case. The investment committee is familiar with the broad area of sustainable investing, so avoid overemphasizing general observations about this section of the market. The Investment Committee is particularly interested in the specific impact and details of your investment strategy.
PowerPoint Presentation (15 pages maximum):
Prepare a presentation for the Investment Committee that lays out your investment strategy and identifies the environmental, social or corporate governance (ESG) issue(s) that you are addressing.
Presentation Guidelines (Optional):
The following are suggested guidelines for the presentation, but should not be considered requirements. The most effective presentations will find a unique and creative way to articulate a strategy that balances risk and positive returns related to financial, environmental and social factors.
1-2 Slides: Identify global or local ESG issue and succinctly explain its relevance to business and society.
2-4 Slides: Outline an economic connection between the ESG issue and a private market-based response.
- How does your investment strategy address the issue? Is it funding a solution and/or benefiting from businesses' adaptation to environmental or social challenges?
- Presentations may include historical evidence of a performance connection to the issue, logical reasoning for a future performance advantage, etc.
3-5 Slides: Present details of your investment strategy.
- Market outlook: lay the foundation for a financially competitive and ESG-productive strategy.
- Asset allocation: outline the asset classes and amount allocated to each.
- Target returns: express target performance in terms of a benchmark or a range of projected returns.
- Risk management process: assess overall diversification, sell discipline, estimated variation in market value, or standard deviation of returns. May include the number of holdings, correlations between holdings, stop-loss provision.
- Examples of a specific (real) target investment: provide a detailed analysis of a public equity, outline your approach to lending to a micro-entrepreneur, describe a trading strategy using long/short investing. This can be framed as an example of an investment you already made or a potential investment.
- Performance back-testing: this is a mock investment so one could show hypothetical performance looking backward in time.
- Fit with the endowment portfolio: describe how your strategy complements the other asset classes already represented in the portfolio.
1-2 Slides: Illustrate benefits of your strategy.
- Express how your strategy advances the institutional mission of Cornell University. List the benefits to society, companies, individuals and small businesses receiving our investments.
1 Slide: Summarize risks associated with your strategy.
Submission Guidelines:
Final submissions must be emailed to SustaInvest@Johnson.Cornell.edu no later than midnight, Eastern Standard Time, March 15, 2010. Please include SustaInvest Competition--User Name--Last Name in the subject line of your submission.
Guidelines: Eligibility
SustaInvest is open to undergraduate or graduate students at any institution.
Resources
Please refer to the SustaInvest Learning Center as a starting point to integrate sustainability research and equity analysis. Contestants will have access to periodic conference calls or web-based chat with investment professionals to discuss sustainable investment strategies.
SustaInvest does not limit participation by geographic limitations or affiliation. SustaInvest may be of particular interest to students pursuing and/or with an interest in finance, economics, venture capitalism, entrepreneurship, public policy, government, the natural and social sciences, or engineering.
