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Team

Faculty Advisors

The fund's faculty advisors are instrumental in coaching analysts on fundamental investing analysis and providing insight on investment decisions. The Laurier Student Investment Fund (LSIF) is a true example of real-world experience, integrated with academic rigour. New analysts are put through a challenging training module on modelling companies and valuing them.

Throughout the course, the professors are a source of advice and provide regular feedback on the analysis and the quality of analyst presentations.

Professor Brian Smith

Professor of Finance

Brian F. Smith is a Professor of Finance in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Laurier. He has published extensively in the areas of corporate finance and market microstructure with a focus on Canadian capital markets. His publications include articles in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Brian has served as president and treasurer of the Northern Finance Association, which annually hosts a major conference for finance academics.

Brian teaches entrepreneurial finance and valuation courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He co-founded the Financial Services Research Centre, a centre dedicated to promoting studies on Canadian Capital markets and the Laurier Student Investment Fund. He helped launch and currently supervises the Laurier Startup Fund, a student-managed $2.8 million fund focused on early stage investments. Brian is currently serving his fourteenth year as coordinator of the Finance Area.

Professor William McNally

Professor of Finance

William J. McNally is a Professor of Finance and has been at Laurier since 1999. William received his MA in Economics from Simon Fraser University in 1986 and subsequently worked as an economic consultant and as a research economist at the Fraser Institute. In 1993 he received his PhD in finance from the University of Toronto. After leaving Toronto, he taught at the University of Victoria. His primary research interests are in distributions, insider trading and market microstructure.

William's research has been published in journals such as Financial Management, the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of Financial Research. He is a co-author (with Stanley Eakins) of Corporate Finance (published by Flatworld), an online introductory finance textbook in both the US and Canada. William is a co-founder and on-going supervisor of the Laurier Student Investment Fund.