Pupils from King Edward’s School won this year’s ifs Student Investor Challenge. During the summer the winners together with King Edward’s Economics and Business Studies teacher, Mr Nigel Vile,  enjoyed a full expenses paid trip to America as part of their prize.

The King Edward’s team of Conor Thomas, Alice Hamer, Ollie Schofield and Rob Wilcox beat over 10,000 teams, or 40,000 students, who entered the competition to win a trip stateside.

Below is an update from Rod McKee from ifs on what the winners got up to during their visit.

After setting out from Bath at 4.30am the winners of this year’s competition, King Edward’s School arrived at Heathrow for their flight to JFK and the start of their prize winning week in New York.

On arrival the busy schedule began, with a short walk from the hotel to Grand Central Station, to purchased seven day subway passes, with unlimited travel at a cost of $27, and then off to the first tourist stop The Empire State Building, which gave the students the opportunity to get a spectacular view of the city. 

During the week, time was spent visiting the tourist sites such as The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island which is the symbol of American immigration and gives an insight into the immigrant experience, Times Square, Broadway to see the Lion King and cycling in Central Park.

A large part of the programme is of course the educational visits and it was entirely appropriate that the team were there at the height of the controversial vote on whether to raise the credit limit for US borrowing, to enable them to pay public employees and interest payments or risk going into default. 

For the first time we were able to visit the American Museum of Finance for a guided tour, which was really relevant for Alice, Olli and Robert who are all going on to university and will be studying economics. But the real highlight of the week was to be able to visit the New York Stock Exchange and to be there for the ‘closing bell’.

We were hosted by Barclays Capital and although our visit was only scheduled for an hour it lasted for almost two hours and included visiting the floor of NYSE, talking to the traders and getting real insight into how all the economic uncertainty was impacting on the market and investors. A real privilege was to visit the Board Room, where we saw the priceless Faberge vase that was presented by the Czar Nicholas II at the turn of the 20th century on the occasion of the listing of the first Russian company on the Exchange, which helped build the Trans-Siberian railroad. 

A visit to Bloomberg, who help sponsor the ifs Student Investor Challenge, by providing the prices, was included where the students were able to learn how Michael Bloomberg, now Mayor of New York, set up the company, visit the Bloomberg Museum and go down one of only seven spiral escalators in the world.

Another of the visits was to the British Consulate for Trade & Finance where as well as learning about the work of the consulate, promoting trade with the US the team were able to give another performance of their successful presentation that earned them their prize.  

Other highlights were the tour of the United Nations building and visits to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection.

Finally a quote from one of the prize winners, Oliver Schofield, which he sent after the trip. 

“It does indeed seem aeons ago that we were prowling the streets of New York, but the elapsed time has merely solidified my impression that the week was one of the best visits I have ever had, and I am immensely grateful to you and the rest of the team behind the competition for facilitating it.

I also hope that the competition continues to go from strength to strength!” 

For further information on the ifs Student Investor Challenge please click here.