FinLab Inauguration, February 5 2019

Speech given by Olivier STEPHANOPOLI :

The inauguration of the Finance Lab of our School on this 5th  February 2019 is for me a great happiness in the literal sense of the word, nearly 15 years after my initial commitment as Co-chair of the Development Campaign with my friend Jean Arvis. In what was then a real work of construction, we have from the beginning identified 3 fundamental operational axes:

• the strengthening of the School’s balance sheet with the establishment of the «Capitalised Fund» created in 2009.
• the necessary development of social and societal action with the significant amplification of the volume and amount of Study Grants.
• the support for academic excellence and the sustainability of know-how and pedagogical expertise

The creation of the ESSEC Finance Lab is of course fully in line with the support of the academic excellence of our School, which has both a long tradition and a solid reputation for leadership in terms of teaching economic and financial matters. It was staked out and shaped in successive stages with the Faculty of the Finance Department, and of course with the various Directors General of the ESSEC Group: Pierre Tapie, then Jean-Michel Blanquer, and now Vincenzo. Dear Vincenzo, a special mention to you is necessary here. With the invaluable contribution of Michel and the professors concerned, you have indeed known, as soon as you took up your mandate, to organize the various pre-existing bricks.

You have thus succeeded with this capacity of consensus which characterizes you and which honors you, to structure them in order to make it a priority project with multiple expertise and solid content. The joint and balanced funding per third of this project, 1/3 Self-financing, 1/3 Public Research of Excellence, 1/3 Private Funding attests to this collective success that you have managed to orchestrate. Thank you very much, and congratulations, it’s a great honour and a great pleasure for me to contribute to this as an individual, in addition to my other corporate leadership roles.

Alongside the School and the Public Institutions, Candrian, Moneta am and Sanso Investment Solutions have chosen to support this beautiful project and to build together the foundations of the private part of the Partnership.

All three leading players in the asset management industry, all three representing French know-how in active management of conviction, while being largely open to the winds of global competition, they will undoubtedly contribute to the emergence of a cluster of high-level expertise in financial analysis, accounting rules and standards, statistics, algorithms, modelling, econometrics, etc.

Dear Teachers, Students, you now have at your disposal an interactive working tool that is set in the best standards of excellence that our School, your School, deserves.

It is now up to you to make it live and grow.

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