NEW YORK, March 2, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fordham will launch a new Master of Science in Global Finance (MSGF) program in cooperation with Peking University, and has received a $1 million grant from the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation to help fund the program in its first three years. Fordham's relationship with NASDAQ will allow the University to expand opportunities for international education, especially in the burgeoning China market.
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The MSGF program was officially registered with the New York State Board of Education in September, and will launch in 2010. The Board of Education's approval was the final step in a year-long program development effort between Peking University's National School of Development (NSD) and Fordham University's Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA).
"Thanks to our partnership with the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation, Fordham is once again taking a leadership position in business education," said Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., senior vice president/chief academic officer at Fordham. "International experience, in and outside the classroom, will prepare graduates of the MSGF program to lead in a world of interconnected, 24/7 markets. That the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation has seen fit to fund the program so generously ratifies its importance to the finance community."
"The NASDAQ OMX Group understands that education is an important part of the ecosystem needed to develop innovative companies that will contribute to the growth of the economy in the U.S. and China," said Eric Landheer, Head of Asia Pacific for NASDAQ OMX. "The NASDAQ Stock Market currently lists 126 Chinese companies including 33 Chinese companies that listed in 2009 alone," he added.
The program is designed to prepare professionals for leadership and management roles in the global financial services industry with a set curriculum divided over three trimesters and two countries. The first students will begin coursework in China in the spring of 2010 and continue at Fordham in the summer.
"With the MSGF, Fordham's Graduate School of Business Administration takes up a task central to the challenge that our national leaders are emphasizing, the task of strengthening cooperative business and economic relations between China and America,"said Robert Himmelberg, Ph.D., interim dean of GBA and co-dean of business faculty. "Our Finance Department has achieved a very high degree of national recognition for its research and teaching capacities and will offer financial training of the highest quality to many of China's next generation of top business leaders. It is a mission to which our faculty is fully equal."
Study will be split between Peking University's campus in Beijing, China, and Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan. The program will cover several important areas of the financial services industry, including financial management of multi-national companies; risk management; portfolio strategies in equity and fixed income securities; and trading of complex securities in the global financial markets. The curriculum is designed to give students an awareness of the current challenges in the global financial industry, as well as a good foundation in industry theory and applications.
Peking University is China's first modern research university, and the country's first national university. The National School of Development was established in 2008 based on the prestigious China Center for Economic Research (CCER). NSD is committed to the internationalization, standardization and localization of the study of the social sciences in China, and to innovation in disciplinary systems, academic perspectives and research methods.
In 2009, 33 Chinese companies listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market, an exchange of NASDAQ OMX, the most of any U.S. exchange during the past year. A total of 126 Chinese companies now list on NASDAQ, including 104 from mainland China and 22 from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The NASDAQ Stock Market is the marketplace for 61 percent of U.S. listed education services companies, including three which are headquartered in China. NASDAQ OMX has offices in Beijing and Hong Kong.
The NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation, Inc., awarded Fordham the $1 million grant in three annual installments of $333,000 to fund the program in cooperation with Peking University. The foundation is supported entirely by contributions from the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. The foundation's mission is to support innovative educational programs and charitable activities that further the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.'s mission to deliver multi-asset, multi-service capability across six continents.
"We look forward to working with NASDAQ on other business education programs," Freedman said. "We believe the partnership will yield a richer curriculum for our students and a more talented pool of future executives for NASDAQ and the industry in general."
About Fordham University:
Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to approximately 14,700 students in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. It has residential campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan, a campus in Westchester, the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y., and the London Centre at Heythrop College in the United Kingdom.
About NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation:
The mission of the NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation is to promote learning about capital formation, financial markets and entrepreneurship through innovative educational programs. It was established in New York City in 1994 and is supported entirely by contributions from The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.
About NASDAQ OMX:
The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. is the world's largest exchange company. It delivers trading, exchange technology and public company services across six continents, with approximately 3,700 listed companies.
NASDAQ OMX offers multiple capital raising solutions to companies around the globe, including its U.S. listings market, NASDAQ OMX Nordic, NASDAQ OMX Baltic, NASDAQ OMX First North, and the U.S. 144A sector. The company offers trading across multiple asset classes including equities, derivatives, debt, commodities, structured products and exchange-traded funds. NASDAQ OMX technology supports the operations of over 70 exchanges, clearing organizations and central securities depositories in more than 50 countries. NASDAQ OMX Nordic and NASDAQ OMX Baltic are not legal entities but describe the common offering from NASDAQ OMX exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Iceland, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. For more information about NASDAQ OMX, visit http://www.nasdaqomx.com. *Please follow NASDAQ OMX on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/NASDAQ-OMX/108167527653) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/nasdaqomx).
The photo is also available via AP PhotoExpress
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