January 25, 2007

Mercantile Exchange supports Kellogg

$1M funding aimed at derivatives, capital markets education for MBA, Ph.D. students

The Kellogg School of Management will receive $1 million over four years from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Trust in support of derivatives and capital markets education.

“One of the salient goals of CME Trust is to make the Chicago area the center of financial market education,” said Leo Melamed, CME Trust trustee and chairman rmeritus of CME. “By making large, multi-year commitments, we are strategically investing in some of Chicago’s most effective university programs, schools and nonprofit agencies.”

Kellogg and Northwestern are uniquely positioned, both globally and within the Chicago region, to promote derivatives and capital markets research and education. With the launch of a new Asset Management Practicum, Kellogg MBA students will gain a more sophisticated experience in capital markets. A new Kellogg School Ph.D. course and fellowships focus on derivatives and related research.

Kellogg MBA students in the new Asset Management Practicum, which will launch in spring 2007, will manage a portion of the Kellogg School’s endowment. The courses will combine investment theory with exposure to leading practitioners. MBA students will rotate across roles of industry analysts, hedge fund fund-of-funds managers, traders, quantitative analysts, and portfolio managers. 

Kellogg faculty and Ph.D. students are actively advancing derivatives-related research. This includes a breadth of applications, for example, in energy markets, federal government liabilities, and portfolio choice, as well as advances in analytic and numerical pricing.

In addition to providing a Ph.D.-level course focusing on derivatives, the grant will also assist with funding research fellowships in support of work on this topic.