Seventeen teams, each made up of five University Students pursuing studies in Banking and Finance, have signed up to participate in the BOV Investment Education Project – an innovative educational initiative that forms part of the Education Pillar of Bank of Valletta’s Community Programme. The BOV Investment Education Project was launched during a presentation to the students held at the new BOV Centre in Santa Venera.

Addressing the participating students, Charles Borg, executive head at the CEO’s office at Bank of Valletta explained that the idea of having a practical Investment Education Project for Banking and Finance students was originated by Prof. Joseph Falzon of the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Malta. “When we were approached by Prof. Falzon, we recognised the validity of this innovative educational initiative. Indeed, thanks to the BOV Investment Education Project, students in banking and finance will be gaining practical hands-on experience putting into practice the investment strategies they study during their course,” said Mr Borg.

The BOV Investment Education Project will see the participating students simulating real life investment portfolio scenarios following a particular investment strategy that they select. The project, aimed at third year banking and finance students at the University of Malta, will provide the students with a virtual sum of e1 million which they can invest in listed stocks, shares or bonds worldwide using Bank of Valletta’s Virtual Portfolio platform. The BOV Virtual Portfolio, a feature on Bank of Valletta’s internet banking service, allows users to track and monitor their investments and calculate profits and losses on their capital according to market fluctuations.

Prof. Joseph Falzon explained that the students have to select an investment strategy, invest up to e1 million, manage the portfolio and ultimately liquidate their portfolio by the end of 2006 where they will be judged on their investment strategy, the way they abided with this strategy, and on profits or losses made. The monitoring of movements in the portfolio of each team will be made by the stockbroking arm of Bank of Valletta.

Robert Ducker, general manager of BOV Stockbrokers Limited said that BOV was making available to the students its full range of resources. “Although trading will be taking place in a virtual environment, the students will actually experience real life trading since the tools that we are placing at their disposal are exactly the same as those that we use for live trading at Bank of Valletta. Indeed, thanks to our technology, we can place all the world’s stock markets at the availability of the participating students in the same way that we do to all our e-brokerage subscribers on BOV’s internet banking platform”.

The teams that place first, second and third will receive cash rewards from Bank of Valletta.