CMU-Q team wins Qatar Stock Exchange competition

Business administration students explore innovative ways to increase stock market liquidity

A team of CMU-Q students in the Business Administration Program took the top prize at Qatar Stock Exchange’s financial competition for university students. Maha Al-Kaabi, Fahad Salah Bahzad, Abraham Farooqui and Faisal Mir presented their three-pronged approach to increasing stock market liquidity to a panel of independent judges.

For the competition, student teams were asked to analyze stock market liquidity, and make recommendations for improvements. The CMU-Q team had three recommendations: to improve financial literacy among investors, to look at the lessons learnt from Singapore as a case study of a stock market that drastically improved liquidity, and to create local-international blended Sharia-compliant exchange traded funds (ETFs) that would be appealing to local investors.

“We are very proud of the way this team used analysis and creativity to find solutions to the question of stock market liquidity,” said John O’Brien, senior associate dean at CMU-Q and associate professor of accounting and experimental economics. O’Brien, along with associate teaching professor of finance Fuad Farooqi, mentored the students as they considered the question.

The competition included seven teams from universities across Qatar, including Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Georgetown University in Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar University, Stenden Qatar, University of Applied Sciences and University of Aberdeen’s AFG College.