Management Studies produces top Investment Analyst

The School of Management Studies in the Faculty of Commerce is proud to announce that the Investment Analysts’ Society has selected a paper written by Finance lecturer Ryan Kruger as the best Investment Analysts’ Journal article of the year.

The paper entitled Evaluating and constructing equity benchmarks in the South African portfolio management context has earned Ryan and his supervisor Professor Paul van Rensburg a prize of R25 000 to be shared jointly and is due to be presented at a black-tie gala dinner in Sandton, Johannesburg on June 11.

Ryan’s academic career has been meteoric. After leaving school with an A aggregate, he enrolled for the BBusSc at UCT in 1998 and topped this with a MBusSc (Cum laude). He is currently engaged with his D.Phil. He joined the Faculty of Commerce in 2004 where he has taken responsibility for lecturing Business Finance, Finance 1, Finance 2 and Finance Honours as well as being course convenor for three subjects.

His research analysed existing South African equity benchmarks, first establishing potential deficiencies in their construction and then attempting to clarify the connection between benchmark and fund size, concentration, liquidity and regulatory constraints in order to suggest improvements. The study employed optimization techniques in order to manage these aspects relative to one another in order to better align fund and benchmark requirements. This is particularly relevant in the context of the South African market as the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is characterised by high levels of concentration due to its large and relatively volatile resources sector.

The research is significant as it suggests there remains tremendous scope to improve on existing South African equity benchmarks by using the optimisation procedures adopted in his study.

Posted 31/05/2009 by Carolyn McGibbon