Students and faculty of the McDonough School of Business made their voices – and cowbells – heard on Wall Street as they sounded the New York Stock Exchange’s closing bell from the Hilltop on Tuesday.
The event, which occurred in the lobby of the Rafik B. Hariri Building, was streamed live onto the trading floor in New York, where brokers were pleased to see the day end with many of the major indexes looking up.
Following the closing, students were invited to a panel discussion sponsored by the Financial Times on the role of capital markets in job creation. The panel, which was led by Financial Times U.S. Managing Editor Gillian Tett, featured representatives from the Federal Reserve, the NYSE and the MSB as well as the Chief Executive Officers of both Rosetta Stone and Under Armour.
Though panelists covered a broad range of topics, the focal points of discussion were the benefits of going public as a company and the role of the federal government in the private financial sector. Lawrence Leibowitz, Chief Operating Officer of the NYSE’s Euronext initiative, kicked off the dialogue by stressing the importance of public trading for business expansion.
“Companies on the NYSE represent about 35 million jobs,” he said. “The truth is that businesses need access to capital markets to start their companies and to start expanding.”
Tom Adams, president and CEO of Rosetta Stone, and Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, confirmed Leibowitz’s remarks with their own stories of company growth. Adams especially outlined the benefits of public trading in creating more capital.
“Before we went public, all the cash we were creating, we were using. We were basically self-funding, so you don’t think as long term,” Adams said.
Going public, or offering company shares for purchase, can be beneficial, but as panelists observed, it can also be difficult in times of economic distress. Because of the recent recession, buyers have been reluctant to invest. Public companies have taken hits to their share prices and ultimately to their profits, which means job losses, said the panelists.
According to Plank, his key to continuing success was perseverance through stock market valleys. Presenting himself as somewhat of a market gladiator, he told listeners that he refused to allow his employees to fall into negativity despite the harsh economic realities that the company faced.
“I told our company as the markets continued to drop, `We are no longer participating in loser talk,'” he said.
Fortunately for the audience, Plank’s “loser talk” was not a pronounced feature of Tuesday’s panel either. Panelists presented positive solutions to market struggles and encouraged entrepreneurs to go forward with their aspirations in spite of the economic climate.
“Entrepreneurship is what made and built America,” Plank said. “I think that’s one of the ideas that needs to be sold by this [presidential] administration.”
For many students, the panel discussion was a wave of assurance and inspiration amid a sea of troubles that include foreign currency manipulation and struggling banks. As for the panel itself, the students said they were impressed by the array of speakers and opinions available to them.
“It was awesome,” graduate student Chelsea Tucker said. “The combination of real entrepreneurs with government people and policy people and professors is phenomenal for a business student. That was probably the best panel I’ve ever been to.”
According to Chris Kormis, associate dean of marketing and communications, the closing bell ceremony and panel discussion were both held at the suggestion of the NYSE, who contacted the school to propose the event.
“They had seen the list of the distinguished speakers on our website, and they were impressed, and so they called us up and suggested it,” Kormis said.
The university is also currently discussing another partnership with the Financial Times later this year, though Kormis said that it is too early to announce the details.
