The first “Bloomberg Trip to London”, organized by Prof. Leonardo Iania from the Louvain School of Management has been a complete success.
At this first edition, undertaken on the 14th and 15th of March in London, a group of more than 30 motivated students, had the possibility to receive professional trainings from two of the most famous financial institutions in the world, namely the London Stock Exchange Group and Bloomberg L.P.
London Stock Exchange
During the training in the London Stock Exchange, the students had the possibility to receive insights on the functioning of both primary and secondary equity markets, initial public offering procedures (IPOs) as well as on the pre-trade and post-trade operations of Clearing and Settlement. During the second part of the training, the students had the unique opportunity to see on live the auction process of trading conducted on the order book until its end of day closure.
They had also the possibility to familiarize with the concepts thanks to practical exercises about the order book. The principal regulatory aspects of trading were also presented before the end of the training.
Bloomberg Headquarters
In the 15th of March, the students attended a full-day training in the Bloomberg L.P. Headquarters.
In the morning session, they familiarized with the use of Bloomberg for recovering interest rates data and most importantly they learnt in practice how to construct Swap curves and how to price interest rate Swaps, the most liquid financial contracts on interest rates. During the afternoon session instead, they attended a training regarding how to retrieve macroeconomic data from Bloomberg terminals, as well as Central Bank data and main reference rates. The training ended with a session on the Portfolio tools of the Bloomberg platform: the students learnt how to use the terminals for portfolio selection, performance evaluation and even scenario analysis.
The students, coming from different programs, were extremely satisfied by the experience from both an educational point of view and a professional one: in fact, they not only had the possibility to increase their practical knowledge about useful instruments and standard procedures of the financial practice but they also obtained certificates they can spend on their CVs.