UNIVERSITIES UPDATE: GRIFFITH STARTS NEW FINANCE CLUB WHILE BOND FAREWELLS AN INTERNATIONAL COHORT
GRIFFITH University has honoured the life and career of Australia’s first registered female stockbroker, Margaret Mittelheuser, naming its stateof-the-art financial trading room after her.
Former governor-general Dame Quentin Bryce opened the trading room in a special ceremony at the Gold Coast campus business school last week. Ms Mittelheuser died in December 2013, aged 82.
The Pro Vice-Chancellor of Business, Professor Michael Powell, said Ms Mittelheuser received an honorary doctorate of Griffith University in 2006, in acknowledgment of an extraordinary career and contribution to Australia.
“Margaret Mittelheuser’s name will be an inspiration to current and future students entering the trading room,” Prof Powell said.
“She had an avid interest in figures and listed stocks, and this interest led to a memorable and enduring career in the stockbroking profession in Brisbane, Sydney and overseas from the mid-1950s.” Banking and finance students have been using the advanced trading room environment to access the Bloomberg Professional service since the opening of the new $ $38 38million million business building last August.
PhD student Brett Doran said a new student-led investment club had been using the Bloomberg system with a software platform offering trusted real-time and historical market data, news and analytics.
“Basically y we wanted to create ate and understand investing better, so we started a group for undergrads which I kind of became a mentor for,” he said.
“Our first project has been to create the country’s first socially responsible index of Australian companies as a proxy to funds and other companies looking for a socially responsi responsible benchmark for their investment portfolios.
“When that is finished we will start up dummy investing funds, and hopefully by next semester or next year we will have a real university fund for third-year students, like most universiti universities in the US have.
“Just as an example of the scope of information, we can access the location of every cargo ship in the world, and information about its cargo, its route and the ports where each ship docks. It has all the financial data you could ever want.”
Mr Doran said there were 14 students in the investment club, including Kate Ptasinska, who founded the Griffith Economics and Finance Student Association last year.
Ms Ptasinska said the student association had already recruited more than 200 members.
“We want to get people more involved in economics and finance and spark their interest, so I began the association and since then the investment club, which I am really proud of,” the 21year-old Polish national said.
“I think it’s great the trading room will be named after Margaret Mittelheuser – it gives us someone to look up to and will hopefully encourage more of the female students to join.”