CFA Society Belgium

🎉 Congratulations to the Winners of the 2023-2024 CFA Society Belgium Master Thesis Awards! 🎉 We are delighted to announce the recipients of this year's awards, recognizing outstanding academic achievements in finance: 🥇 First Prize: Ms. Lison Christiaens – HEC Liège  Thesis: "Navigating high inflation: Is the ECB's monetary anchor holding firm? A study of the impact of monetary policy shocks on inflation expectations."  Supervisor: Professor Julien Hambuckers, HEC Liege 🥈 Second Prize: Ms. Marie-Laure De Breuck – UAntwerpen  Thesis: "Goals based wealth management: two implementation issues."  Supervisors: Professor Jan Annaert and Marc De Ceuster, UAntwerpen 🥉 Third Prize: Ms. Julie Nguyen Ngoc Khanh Van – KU Leuven  Thesis: "Earnings management prior to voluntary de-listings via LBOs and MBOs: A European perspective."  Supervisor: Assistant Professor Alain Praet These exceptional works reflect the dedication and talent of emerging finance professionals in Belgium. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the esteemed jury for their meticulous evaluation: 💼 Professor Theo Vermaelen, INSEAD - Chair 💼 Philippe Longerstaey CPA, CFA, CAIA, Board Member 💼 Xavier Emile Timmermans 💼 Bruno Van der Schueren CFA, CIPM, Board Member 💼 Paul Van der Vliet 💼 Arnaud Wala Your time, dedication, and critical insights ensure the continued success of this program. Thank you for fostering the next generation of financial professionals. To learn more about the Theses Awards, visit: https://lnkd.in/eE32XXxr #CFABelgium #ThesesAwards #CFACommunity #FinancialExcellence

Save the date! 27 March CFA Society Belgium will host its first #game event! Join us to explore the world of #insurance and which #strategicdecisions, like #duration, #interestratematching, and #hedgingstrategies can be made to ensure #balancesheetmanagement. Servaas Houben, CFA will provide a short introduction on the types of insurance, historical developments, and #financialstatementanalysis, and thereafter Marcel Smith, and Oscar Dries will coordinate the #balancesheetmanagementgame. During the game participants will play in teams when managing a fictitious insurance company. The workshop environment ensures quick #feedbackloops, interaction with other team members and the coordinators, and a steep learning curve so by the end of the session participants will come away with a clear understanding on the challenges and opportunities for insurance companies, and how #assetmanagers and #portfolioadvisors can provide value. https://lnkd.in/ez9ZpK9q 📕

Book review, Priya Parker, "The art of gathering" 🧾 Summary ✒️ As #meetings are a big part of our professional lives, understanding how to make them more productive, pleasant and impactful is a good investment. The art of gathering illustrates that the way we meet, impacts the outcomes. People often organize gatherings without reflecting carefully what the real (underlying) #purpose of a meeting is. By having a better idea why the meeting is being held, you can organize them in a better way. ✒️ Thereafter inviting the right number of people and ensuring correct exclusion results in focus and healthy tension required for discussion and progress. Also the meeting #location can have a significant impact as people connect their emotions with surroundings (e.g. having a coffee in the office or outside can already result in different conversations) ✒️ Hosting is a skill by itself: being absent as a host (#chill) can result in people being confused while being to much present can result in catering only for a certain part of your audience. The book therefore recommends a blended approach. At CFA Belgium for example we combine presentations with social mingling afterwards: for the first people are required to attend the entire timeslot, while for the latter people can leave at the time they please ✒️ #Rules are preferred to #etiquette, as rules can be easier understood and incorporated, while etiquettes are more time consuming to grasp. Starting and closing a meeting are the most important factors of success. The start needs to be thought provoking to energize the audience: starting with #logistics is therefore a no-no. When ending a meeting one should avoid an abrupt ending and leave the audience confused. Instead summarizing the meetings finding (inner looking) and translating how these findings can be used once people leave the meeting (the outer world) are essential. 💡 Authors view The book addresses some essential parts of meetings without going into too much technical details: the book mainly focusses on the components of meetings and how to get the best out of people.  The book does not address meeting styles like virtual vs physical or how to present slides or numbers. Furthermore the conclusions are based on personal experiences not so much on academics or data research. Finally the book takes the approach of a universal meeting style without going into cultural specifics. I would describe the book more as "common-sense" instead of "groundbreaking" which is confirmed that it has more a story telling approach instead of a scientific one. Overall the book is a good investment for people spending significant time in meetings. Content quantitative: 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 ❄️❄️ Content qualitative: NA Readable: 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 ❄️❄️ Concise: 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 ❄️❄️ Applicable: 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞❄️ Total: 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 ❄️❄️

💥New Part-Time Society Manager💥 We’re thrilled to welcome Yasmine B. as our new part-time Society Manager! As independent contractor, Yasmine will be supporting our board in various Society activities, including: ✅ Organising events and trainings for our 400 Members ✅ Candidate support evenings ✅ University student information sessions ✅ Working with the CFA Institute and other Societies ✅ Building relationships with academia, companies and other stakeholders 👏We’re very grateful to Niki Cox for his dedicated service as Society Manager for the past 3 years. 👍Thank you, Niki, for your hard work and contributions to our Society! Please join us in welcoming Yasmine to the team.

As we are approaching the end of 2024, CFA Society Belgium is looking back at a very busy and successful year with lots of events. A quick recap of 2024: - Jan: charterholder event welcoming our new CFA Institute charterholders 🥳 - Feb: passive investment by Corentin Scavee of Easyvest which ideas and principles are very close to our #CFA curriculum 📈 - Mar: annual Trends investment summit for which we want to thank Robert Van Beek CFP® for inviting CFA Society Belgium 🙏 - Mar-Apr: ESG training cycle consisting of 5 workshops ranging from qualitative to quantitative assessment. Many thanks to all the speakers (Florian Jacques, Andrea Gabellone, MBA, Ismail Fouda, Robbert van Eerd, Philippe Grégoire, and François-Guillaume de Lichtervelde) and for Loïc Sacré, CFA for organizing 💚 - May: family office panel event lead by François-Xavier Fanard giving insights in the purpose of family offices and their role💪 - May: social bonds presentation by Tammie Tang showing the development of social investing 🏘️ and Tom Van den Berghe on the sustainability label ⭐ - June: annual BlackRock mid-year forecasting event. Many thanks to Karim Chedid and Jamie Forbes for coming over to Brussels to share your insights and thanks Jérôme Folcque, CFA, CAIA, CIPM for contacting the speakers 🙏 - June: #AI and #balancesheet management for insurers by Raymond van Es and Sijbo Holtman of Milliman Benelux, many thanks coming over to Brussels 🙏 - Sept: candidates' event sharing career and learning insights by CFA charterholders organized by Manoj Khokale, CFA 📚 - Sept: Net zero event with Ed Collinge of Robeco and Jan Bronselaer of Ageas Group discussing the international and local developments on #ESG and net zero 🌳 - Sept: women's network lunch with Maud Reinalter, CFA. Thanks Alexandra Budge, CFA for the initiative, let's make this a recurring event 👩 - Oct: annual Faraday Venture Partners presentation this time on analysis of startup companies. Many thanks Jaime Biel and François-Xavier Fanard for sharing all your insights 👍 -Nov: our first book presentation by Robert Van Beek CFP®on Towards better financial planning 📕 - Nov: annual forecasting event hosted by Stacey Notteboom, CFA with Mathieu Savary, CFA, Koen De Leus, and Philippe Gijsels on short and longer term investment trends 📈 18 events, 24 different speakers 😎 Not only the quality of events themselves, but also the #diversity of topics and speakers is impressive and therefore we want to thank our speakers, CFA Society Belgium members, and programming committee volunteers for all their energy and input 🙏 #events #investing #finance #belgium #programmingcommittee

Great to renew our partnership with Capitant! We are looking forward to meeting Belgian students at upcoming presentations and events in Brussels, Gent, Antwerp, Liege and Leuven.

Many thanks Jérôme Folcque, CFA, CAIA, CIPM and BlackRock for inviting the board of CFA Society Belgium to your BeLux annual conference 2024 🙏 inspiring presentations on etfs, expectations for 2025 and AI and great to see BlackRock is supporting King Baudouin Foundation for #financial #literacy 📚

Did you know that presentations of past events like ""Towards better financial planning?" by Robert Van Beek CFP® can be found at the CFA Society Belgium website under the "clicking 📈 here" link at the start of the page? https://lnkd.in/eNhkjssf 📚

Full house at CFA Society Belgium annual forecasting event where Mathieu Savary, CFA, Koen De Leus, and Philippe Gijsels provided their insights in both short term and longer term market trends. Thanks Stacey Notteboom, CFA for contacting the speakers and for chairing the event and thanks to our members for the high attendance! CFA Society Belgium will go into a short "winter break" and we hope to see you all again at our annual new charterholder event 6 Feb.

Only 4 days 📅 left to the CFA Society Belgium annual YE #forecast 💹 event titled "2025 and Beyond" where we are delighted to have Koen De Leus, Philippe Gijsels and Mathieu Savary, CFA as speakers 🙏 . Although forecasting remains a tricky balance between data and intuition, forecasting events create room for thought 💡 "Failing to plan is planning to fail". For more info on the event or to get to know more about our local society please check out the CFA Society Belgium website https://lnkd.in/eDE7H4jD 📕 Hope to see you all next week!