Prof. Dr. rer. pol. Patrick Moore,

Let’s talk about the positive things.

In the last News I had reported about an experiment – mixing wealth management etc. lectures at universities in Zurich with practical aspects in this business field from financial institutions – and I had also announced the report on this trip, not an excursion in the traditional sense – but interesting never the less. The report on my homepage gives details, please see http://194.94.76.8/moore/,

For one and a half semesters we had been working on the preparation of our Finance Excursion to London and Dublin. In general it stood under the topic Capital Markets, though of course we didn’t limit our preparation and the visits to this topic. In the course International Financial Markets and Institutions the excursion group (and other students from the course) intensively worked on the financial markets and institutions in England and Ireland – but also on others around the world (Fed vs. ECB, IMF, World Bank Group ...) and the impact of the financial crisis and the debt crisis on these economies. Steve Hartley, whom we knew from our visit to Zurich and the Swiss Business School, gave a block course on Wealth Management. So the students were really fit for the financial topics on our tour. The report is finished and will be published shortly. An e-version is available also under http://194.94.76.8/moore/ .

For the second time our partner university Gdansk School of Banking organised an international Business Week http://www.wsb.gda.pl/eng,gda-eng,business-week. 18 BMS students and one student from LTM participated – and I believe they learnt a lot and hat great fun – read their report – again also under http://194.94.76.8/moore/.

In the winter semester 2010/11 for the first time students from our partner university Xianda in Shanghai spent one (four students) respectively two (three students) semesters in Stralsund. I have the feeling they enjoyed it and learnt a lot – and also we benefited a lot from their input. We look forward to welcoming the next group in September!

But there were also problems:

• Several cases of illness hit our degree course very hard
• Budget cuts of partly more than 2/3rd during the first semester.
• Limitations in guest lectures and tutorials.
• Restrictions in taking care of international relationships ...

These budget problems don’t really let us feel the education initiative the government had announced. For the fourth semester in row I had no support by a student assistant, requests of students for a tutorial in corporate finance were rejected just as a tutor for organisational matters and as second representative during our finance excursion. Our administration issued a rule that if we have international guests and we should invite them for a dinner, this should not cost more than 20 Euro per person. College Janusz A. Szymczyk from mechanical engineering pointed out that it is not possible to go to a restaurant and give your guests a limit – or take them to a Döner or Asian Take Away – and I totally agree with him.

But let’s look ahead - positively.

There is no finance excursion in the pipeline for the winter semester – but college Rothlauf and the third semester students are working on an intercultural excursion in India. I’m definite: the international finance excursion we carried out 2007 http://194.94.76.8/moore/ was also to a great extent an intercultural experience – this will be a great adventure for all participants. I’m looking forward to their reports!

I shall call for my last Finance Excursion to New York in September – the excursion to take place in May 2012 if the financial restrictions of our university allow it. For over 10 years every two years we have visited this centre of international finance. Dozens of students had the chance to gather international finance experience, to learn from reality in this exciting centre of finance, to build up connections for internships and bachelor theses. This field trip will also be integrated into my course International Capital Markets – but also with quite a lot of material about International Financial Engineering (structured finance, project finance ...). The theoretical high level of this course and excursion requires advanced students, so students should be at least in their third semester in the winter term, where we work on basics of finance (corporate finance) and start with international finance in the summer term. As parallel we shall work on the financial topics we shall deal with in New York, we’ll be nicely prepared for the trip.

I shall also start working on my last Baltic Sea Forum in Oct 2012. In my last News I already announced.

“It will be my turn then in 2012 – and: This will be my last full time term at FH Stralsund, meaning it will be a kind of "fare well event". So please keep this in mind!! We’ll have guest speakers from my excursions of all over the world, students from BMS that are active in banking and from our partner universities. Even if you are not a finance fan: note the date (which is not fixed jet, but it will be in the first half of Oct 2011 – a combination with the 3rd Oct?? What do you think – a nice chance to spend a wonderful long weekend in Stralsund???). Please give me / us a feed back on this aspect!”

As soon as topics and dates are fixed, I’ll add them at this place.

In Oct 2011 I plan to visit our partner university in Shanghai (the Xianda College of Economics & Humanities, SISU) to talk about further possibilities of cooperation, to talk with students interested in coming to Stralsund next year, and to give them an idea of teaching at our university ... Though I can’t take students with me I look forward to this trip, although that implies, that I’ll miss the 20th anniversary on 19^th Oct and the Alumni Ball on 22^nd Oct. I shall participate in this year’s Baltic Sea Forum the week before, though.