Many think that because Darden casts itself as a general management program that the school has no specialties. General management, however, is a philosophy that suggests that no business problem can viewed in isolation – that a finance problem relates to marketing, a marketing problem relates to operations and so on. So, in Darden Capital Management (DCM), Darden students can both test their general management principles by evaluating equities using a general management perspective to understand the entire firm and they can specialize in asset management in order to further their careers in this niche within finance.
Through DCM, first year students pitch long and short investment ideas to second year student fund managers who oversee the $5MM of Darden’s endowment that are contained within the Darden, Cavalier, Jefferson and Monticello funds. Approximately twenty first year students ultimately “graduate” and run these funds themselves, for credit, reporting on their investment decisions and performance to the Darden Trustees. Students who manage these funds report that they have had an advantage breaking into asset management, as they have had a noteworthy conversation piece in interviews. Managing five million dollars will do that…
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Read the full article: Friday Factoid: Manage $5 million at Darden