OSIG Archives - College of Business

January 5, 2016

A quick look back at 2015’s top stories

Welcome to 2016 at the College of Business, and we wish all of you the greatest successes in the year ahead.

But before we all get too immersed in the coming 12 months, here’s a quick look back at the top 10 highlights the college experienced in 2015. In no particular order (we’ll leave the rankings to you), here they are:

— Guest speaker lineup that includes design-thinking guru Barry Kudrowicz, international business CEO and ethicist Joe Lobbato and Israeli diplomat Ido Aharoni entertains and enlightens Austin Hall audiences.

— Online/Portland hybrid MBA program produces first class of graduates.

— Seaweed that tastes like bacon, the subject of an MBA student group’s integrated business plan, takes the nation by social media storm (the celebrated plant is known as dulse).

— Business Expo packs every floor of Austin with potential employers.

— Change in leadership atop the college as Mitzi Montoya takes over as dean following Ilene Kleinsorge’s retirement.

— COB students organize, stage TEDxOregonStateU, which packs the LaSells Stewart Center for a night of “Disruption.”

— OSU students dominate Duck counterparts in Civil War Shark Tank.

— Celebration of Excellence crowns new Hall of Famer (Stephen Bailey) while honoring college’s best and brightest.

— Oregon State Investment Group contingent meets “King of Private Equity” Stephen Schwarzman during annual trip to New York.

— Marketing professor Jim McAlexander receives KEDGE Business School’s “20 Years On” research prize for his 1995 ethnography on Harley-Davidson consumers. The prize recognizes research that has “paved the way for significant development within a field or a scientific approach.”

Best of the rest: COB alum Jaymes Winters serves as the kickoff speaker at the opening of the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center; OSU Advantage Accelerator continues work with entrepreneurs, startups; employers fill loge level at Reser Stadium to network with students.

October 12, 2015October 12, 2015

OSIG members bullish on NY trip

OSIG members with the Bowling Green Bull, a statue in New York's financial district. A bull is the symbol of financial optimism.

OSIG members with Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.

Eight of the top-performing analysts from the Oregon State Investment Group, a College of Business club aimed at finance majors but open to anyone interested in investing, spent a week in New York in early September.

“The goal is for OSIG members to get out and network with alumni on Wall Street, and at other firms willing to host us,” said club president Blake Hendricks, who made the annual trip for the second time. “We have so much appreciation for alumni willing to meet with us, take the time to help us get our foot in the door. One of our alums, Matt Derr at Credit Suisse, he brought in a recruiter who gave us a whole presentation on how to get a job.”

In addition to connecting with alumni, a highlight of the trip was meeting Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group. With a net worth of roughly $11.6 billion, Schwarzman, known as the king of private equity, is tied with Rupert Murdoch at No. 38 on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.

“He was a very outgoing guy and gave great insight on what private equity is like,” said Erik Paige, an OSIG portfolio manager who took part in the club outing to New York for the first time. “He said he’s not a technical guy, he’s a big-picture guy, and he always tries to surround himself with the smartest guys in the room. It was really interesting for me – he’s the first billionaire I’ve ever met.

“Being on the floor of the stock exchange was really cool as well,” Paige said. “My impression going in, from the movies, was that there’d be a lot of yelling and people crammed into one space, but actually, there aren’t that many people.”

Hendricks, like Paige a senior finance major, noted the “very broad scope of finance” the OSIG members were able to absorb in New York, including economic research (at Strategas Research Partners), private wealth management (U.S. Trust) and corporate finance (Google).

“Talking to the executives, it puts everything you learn in theory into reality,” he said.

Andrea Anthony, assistant professor of finance, accompanied the group.

“The students really came prepared with interesting questions and unique perspectives,” she said. “They presented themselves professionally and I think strengthened the name of Oregon State University at the firms that we visited.”

February 20, 2015May 15, 2015

OSIG hosts UO counterpart

Presenter Katie Merrill talks with schoolmates and students from the UO at the breakfast portion of the meeting.

You wouldn’t know it from her stylish print dress, but fashion is not a passion for Katie Merrill.

Nevertheless, there the OSU senior was Friday morning, giving an analysis of high-end design company Michael Kors to about four dozen of her peers in an Austin Hall classroom during a joint meeting of the Oregon State Investment Group and the group’s counterparts from the University of Oregon.

“It was kind of nerve-wracking with everyone here,” Merrill said after her 30-minute presentation, during which she recommended both schools’ clubs invest in Michael Kors. “But it’s always fun to present to the combined group. The questions are different.”

Merrill, double-majoring in finance and industrial engineering, said she spent a month preparing for Friday, her fourth such presentation overall.

Her talk, delivered to a dressed-for-success audience, followed a presentation by Oregon’s Matthew Eden and Michael Lyford, who had analyzed Infoblox, a company that deals in IT management tools.

The student investors had no shortage of follow-up questions for the presenters, many of them pointed.

Afterward one of the questioners, the UO’s Graham Simon, a math major, explained: “Someone has to dig into the numbers and find the pressure points.”

The presentations by Lyford, Eden and Merrill came after other club members had given overviews of each group’s three portfolios: Tall Firs, Svigals and DADCO for the University of Oregon, and Large-Cap, DADCO and Russell 2000 Synthetic for Oregon State; DADCO, which stands for the D.A. Davidson Student Investment Competition, features 20 schools throughout the West, each of which is given $50,000 each September to manage. OSIG is the defending champion, having last year turned that $50K into $69,014.35.

The Large-Cap portfolio, which originated with $1 million in funds from the OSU Foundation in October 2008, is now worth $1,944,561.86.

The Oregon State Investment Group meets every Friday from 8 to 10 a.m.