[MUSIC] So welcome to this online specialization in investment management that we have designed for you. I would like, as the director of the Geneva Finance Research Institute, to tell you What GFRI stands for, who we are, what we do and what makes our team a little bit special for this course. So, the GFRI is an interdisciplinary research institute located at the University of Geneva. We're based at the interface of three faculties, the Geneva School of Economics and Management, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Psychology. And we specialize in two areas, the first one being portfolio management, due to the private banking expertise in Geneva. The second one being finance and society due to all the lessons learned after the subprime crisis, and whether we can answer if finance adds value to society. So let me perhaps tell your or convince you why your faculty is a bit special. First of all, the breadth and diversity of its knowledge in very complimentary fields or sub-fields in finance. Secondly, we have many faculty members that specialize in novel areas such as sustainable finance, such as experimental finance or Nero finance. We also publish in top eight rated publication in finance and we try to compete at the international level in terms of publications but we also have a practical side. We interact with the industries through workshops, seminars, conferences, and some of us have experiences with regulatory bodies. Finally, a diverse city is the key. We are diverse in terms of our educational backgrounds, our cultural backgrounds, in terms of gender, nationalities. And I hope this melting pot works together to deliver a good course for you. So let me present the team. The team is nine professor and one project coordinator. Let me start with Tony Barada. Tony Barada is a Specialist in theoretical asset pricing. He can derive very complicated mathematical formulas. But at the same time, he has a great sense of intuition and he can convince you and he can convince me that we understand finance and that we're finance specialists. Inesh Sayev, she's our International Finance Specialist. She Deals with international asset pricing and tells you whether you should invest abroad in China, Mexico, Brazil or whether this is just a fad. Michelle [FOREIGN] he is the project leader for this MOOC that we have developed for you, he is a banker, he has 20 years of experience, he's also a macro economist and in this perspective he can tell you whether Mrs. Yellen is going to raise the interest in future, whether you can make money out of it. But of course, as every macroeconomist, you should attach attach a certain probability to his forecast. Now let me turn to. Is a real estate specialist. He can tell you perhaps or forecast the next housing bubble in Switzerland or perhaps in China and you should listen to his advice if you're a house or a home owner. Philip Kruger, he He's specializing in one of our novel areas which is sustainable finance. And he really can disentangle the real value added for long term investors of sustainable investment criteria from this simply being a marketing tool for investors that banks may want to use. And Kerstin Preuschoff who's an associate professor in neurofinance in our institute she does something very interesting. She would put traders, students, or CEOs in an MRI and would see whether when you make financial decisions there's the risk return patterns that activate in your brain regions and whether you think like Markowitz thinks about portfolio selection. My colleague Olivier Scallier is a financial econometrician. He's also a theorist, but he can also handle very practical problems and one that he's very keen on is to say whether an active monitor is relying on luck or whether he's really delivering genuine true performance with his skills. Philip Valta, he's our corporate finance specialist. And he can tell you whether corporate decision making can enhance or destroy value for the shareholders and for yourself. Jonas Demaurier, he's our project coordinator. He recently graduated from our wealth management master program at the University of Geneva. He's very interested in portfolio management and he's the one who keeps us organized, focused, and makes this whole package work together efficiently and hopefully for the benefit of all you participants. Myself, I don't want to say too much. I'm interested in experimental finance, asset pricing and corporate governance. Recently, I've been doing research on whether, and how, people trade honesty for a higher compensation or benefits. So for instance, if a CEO cheats, he can have a higher salary. He knows that. Will he cheat? As Mark Twain said, honesty is the best policy when there's money in it. But I also know that as humans, we are all prone to temptations. So that's the team and as you can see some of our members have an SFI allocation next to their affiliation. SFI stand for the Swiss Finance Institute which is a public private partnership that has been founded a few years ago by the Swiss banks. And which works in close cooperation with six universities and the Geneva University. The Swiss Finance Institute specializes in research, doctoral education, knowledge transfer activities in finance, and its research is really cutting edge. We are first in Europe and fifth in terms of ranking in terms of our publications international finance journals. So SFI given that it has a strong priority on investment management very much welcomes the participation of its GFRI faculty within this online investment management course. So, a final word, we at GFRI very much hope that by enrolling and keeping focused in this online course in investment management you will be able to grasp some of the cutting edge research in finance that is useful for making investment decisions on the one side. That you will be able to learn applied concepts. Whether investment management is an art or a science, I would say it's a combination of both. I think what's important is that when you get out of this course, that you have completed it successfully. You have the tool kit that allows you to stay confident and serene in your investment decision despite market turmoils and crisis that will be always around in the future. So stay cool, enjoy the show, and I hope you enjoy following this online investment management course. [MUSIC]
