[A fleet of boats racing against the powerful tides] FISF EMF 2025 Students Present Shining Moments in 2025 UBS Financial Elite Challenge | Career

Release time：2025-06-30    

[A fleet of boats racing against the powerful tides] FISF EMF 2025 Students Present Shining Moments in 2025 UBS Financial Elite Challenge | Career

In this year’s UBS Financial Elite Challenge, four students from 2025 FISF continued their excellent performance and stood out in the challenge with their international perspectives, solid equity analysis capabilities and confidence in competition. Among the four, Haocheng Gong and Chenhao Yao of EMF 2025 won the first prize in the Mainland Zone; while Siyuan Liu and Keyan Miu won the third prize. Congratulations to these four students!

When the competition rules were upgraded, the two teams were still able to show robust strength. The Professional Development Center hereby specially gave an exclusive interview to the award-winning students, inviting them to share their experience and gains in the challenge!

First Prize

Hao * Gong                                            复旦大学 Fudan University

Third Prize

Si * Liu                                                  复旦大学 Fudan University

Congratulations to these four students!

2025 UBS Financial Elite Challenge

Elegant demeanor of Team hcch and Team hedge fun in the challenge

Challenge Introduction

This year’s UBS Financial Elite Challenge adopted a dual-zone competition format. Participants were required to progressively refine and present a long-short equity portfolio analysis of two selected stocks. Through multiple rounds of evaluation and head-to-head competition, winners for various categories were determined, culminating in a final round where the grand champion was crowned.

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Team hcch

50. Professional capabilities: This not only examines our research ability but also exert high demands for PPT making and English-speaking abilities, making a challenging test of the professional capabilities of seller-side analysts.
50. Team cooperation: Team cooperation is essential. Working with good teammates with complementary personalities and clear division of labor can make efficiency higher.
50. Decent performance: The final round gave a simulation of a real roadshow scenario: one participant acted as the Sales, one as the Researcher, and a staff member as the client. We needed to complete the demonstration from the very beginning of giving greetings, and the whole process highly restored sellers’ actual roadshow situations. Confidence played a significant role here - acting in a natural and graceful manner when giving greetings and speaking with fervor and assurance when communicating with the “client”.
50. Time distribution: we needed to do the research while creating a PPT at the same time, trying to determine what major components we wanted to present before finishing early-stage research.

For high-intensity preparations for the competition, Team hcch offered some advice:

- Research and evaluation:

50. Advice from a senior: when attending long-short competitions, compare fundamentals at the same level: don’t write one first then another, just combine the research and valuation of fundamentals altogether; and consider more before valuation.

50. After finishing research, there might be some outrageous numbers on the prediction sheet, which should be paid more attention to as they could possibly been asked of in the defense period.
50. When making valuations, whether domestic or overseas, find out the benchmarking points in combination with the market, and make comparisons with competitors both at home and abroad, meaning conduct comprehensive research on comparable companies at home and abroad. If the research is comprehensive enough, basically there will be no problem.

- Team-up preparation:

50. Find your teammates as soon as possible. Start early, and don’t think there’s no chance. Try to present your research and defense abilities, and do all you can to get the best result.
50. Many seniors at FISF have experience in attending the challenge. So, it would be better if you can find one to guide you through.

- Emotional fluctuations and teammate cooperation:

50. During the May Day holiday, we were just at the point of sprint for PPT draft. We borrowed an office space from one of our fellow students to make last-minute preparations, but ended up being locked outside the door for 2 hours as we went out to throw away the takeout food. There were less than two days left. So, we chose to squat at the door and discuss what to do in the next page of PPT. The atmosphere was quite tense but everyone kept engaged.
50. At the competition period, we were also busy with various affairs like the internship and final exams. My teammates were extremely understanding and cooperative. Luckily, we managed to get the overall progress in time in the end.

Team hedge fun

50. Industry selection: The report we had originally prepared was not fit for the competition, so we had to change one within a short time and select an industry undergoing cycle downstreaming. So, a key problem we met when we wrote the report was how to present a unique opinion about an industry undergoing cycle downstreaming.

50. Research details: With the progress of the competition sessions, the judges gradually paid deeper attention to the details in the research reports, including raising a question about the income and gross profit margin of a company in 2024 in the US region, and another about convertible bonds, which brought to our sight the directions that we could disassemble and take into special considerations later.
50. Formats of the final: The competition format this time was really interesting for us. The status and behaviors we had when “truly” facing the client led us to think about how to elicit contents and create a better communication atmosphere through more decent social activities. This was not just a test on our basic skills, but a measurement to soft skills like social etiquette and workplace communication competence. Such experience was extremely beneficial for us students who haven’t been working full time officially.

For the change of the competition rules, Team hedge fun proposed several thoughts:

- Presentation in the final:

50. We only prepared answers for ordinary questions and the three-minute presentation at first. It was not until the final began that we realized our lack of considerations for etiquette, social atmosphere and other details before the competition. Therefore, we just took the final as a real roadshow to observe and learn from.

- Team-up preparation:

50. Communicate with FISF seniors as much as possible. I’d like to thank Senior Qing Luo and Senior Xuhui He, who had provided much help during the competition.

Putting theories into practices and bringing imagination to life, year after year FISF students keep on breaking through themselves and persist in innovation and scaling heights. This is what comes down in one continuous line for FISF students, but also an expectation for students of the school and PDC from first to last. The school and PDC will continue to encourage students to boldly set foot on higher places and look into farther distances. We look forward to your actively seeking your life positions in the world of finance!