abrdn Enters Second Decade Supporting Wharton Investment Competition for Students

Continues legacy of work with leading business school’s Global Youth Program initiative

January 30, 2023—PHILADELPHIA—abrdn is pleased to join University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in today announcing the semifinalists for the school’s 2023 Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, extending the firm’s relationship with the business school’s Wharton Global Youth Program into a second decade.

abrdn’s Americas home office, only a few miles’ walk from the Wharton campus in Philadelphia, provides evaluators from across the investment spectrum for the competition’s semifinal round, reviewing more than 1,400 investment strategy proposals entered from high school teams around the world, ultimately selecting 55 for advancement to the next round.

abrdn and its progenitors have contributed support to the program since 2012, when the nascent competition featured only a handful of participating teams from schools around the Delaware Valley region. Today, in addition to the semifinal evaluation, abrdn attends the global finale and winners’ presentation hosted on the University of Pennsylvania campus. In 2022, equities investment analyst Joe Rava joined the ceremony, where the team Sailing to Success from Arizona won top honors.

“abrdn is proud of its longtime relationship with Wharton Global Youth. We are delighted to support this and similar investment education initiatives with leading universities around the world,” says Jim O’Connor, Head of the Americas at abrdn. “Every year the competition grows both more intense and global, and it is no easy feat to choose only 50 semifinalists; however our colleagues genuinely enjoy seeing the creativity and ingenuity that entry teams bring to their projects, and it is an honor to be a part of this annual showcase of young talent.”

"We are grateful for our years of engagement with abrdn and our shared interest in supporting financial education,” adds Eli Lesser, Executive Director at Wharton Global Youth Program. “As financial technology eliminates barriers for new investors, we are more dedicated than ever to our investment competition mission to promote client-focused objectives, a long-term-investing mindset, thoughtful analysis, and strategic decision-making. These core learnings serve students well throughout their lives.” 

Read more about Wharton Global Youth and the competition here and below.

About abrdn

At abrdn, we enable our clients to plan, save and invest for their futures. We structure our business into three areas – and together they reflect our focus on enabling our clients to be better investors:

• Investments: We work with clients to create solutions across asset classes, regions and markets globally – combining multi-layered research and market insights with technology and diverse thinking.


• Adviser: We offer market-leading platform technology and tools that enable UK wealth managers and financial advisers to create more opportunity for their business and their clients.


• Personal: We help people throughout the UK plan for their financial futures – through our financial planning business and our digital investing services.

Across our investments, adviser and personal businesses we manage and administer approximately $616 billion of assets for our clients, and abrdn plc has over 1 million shareholders. (Figures as at 30 June 2022)

 

Our investments are built on an insight strength that comes from multi-layered research and a large global footprint. Our teams collaborate across multiple capabilities, to create forward-thinking solutions that aim to meet our clients’ needs and deliver more sustainable outcomes. Our investments business manages assets on behalf of individuals, governments, pension funds, insurers, companies, charities and foundations – with support and expertise from 800 investment specialists in over 30 locations.

US Marketing Disclosure

In the United States, abrdn is the marketing name for the following affiliated, registered investment advisers: abrdn Inc., abrdn Investments Limited, abrdn Australia Limited, abrdn Asia Limited, Aberdeen Capital Management, LLC, abrdn ETFs Advisors LLC and abrdn Alternative Funds Limited.

About the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition

The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, launched in 2012, is a 12-week challenge in which students compete in teams of four to seven, led by an advisor, to win the chance to manage the wealth of a potential client. 

Presented with a case study of this client, teams must create a compelling and creative long-term strategy that addresses the client’s investment goals. (This year’s case study features Peter Wang Hjemdahl, co-founder and Chief Advocacy Officer at rePurpose Global, a large plastic–action coalition, bringing together brands, innovators, and individuals to combat the plastic–pollution crisis.) Along the way, students learn investing concepts with the help of Wharton Global Youth Program resources, conduct in-depth analysis, and buy stocks for their portfolio using an online simulator that is a tool for trading and portfolio-management education.

Following the end of 10 weeks of trading, each team is required to submit a report detailing its recommended investment strategy, analytical approach and competition journey. Judges review these final investment policies and select the top 50, which then compete against each other in the Semifinals round. The top 10 Semifinalists advance to the Global Finale, which will be held on Wharton’s Philadelphia campus on April 22, 2023.

About the Wharton School and the Wharton Global Youth Program

Founded in 1881 as the world’s first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the future of business by incubating ideas, driving insights, and creating leaders who change the world. With a faculty of more than 235 renowned professors, Wharton has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students. Each year 13,000 professionals from around the world advance their careers through Wharton Executive Education’s individual, company-customized, and online programs. More than 104,000 Wharton alumni form a powerful global network of leaders who transform business every day. For more information, visit www.wharton.upenn.edu.

The Wharton Global Youth Program mobilizes the extensive opportunities of the Wharton academic community to educate, inform and inspire pre-college students to explore business practices, analyze the world’s complex challenges, and take the needed steps to become leaders who will transform the global economy.

Media Contact

Tim Bourgaize Murray
Senior Communications Americas, abrdn
484.515.5204
timothy.murray@abrdn.com