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New Bloomberg Lab provides City experience

Published: 5 December 2014 at 10:55

Anglia Ruskin opens £160,000 state-of-the-art trading room on Chelmsford campus

The real world of financial trading has entered the classroom, thanks to a new state-of-the-art Bloomberg room which has opened on Anglia Ruskin University’s Chelmsford campus.

The £160,000 Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab is housed in the Lord Ashcroft International Business School and will play a major role in the various finance, accounting, banking and economics courses offered on Anglia Ruskin’s Chelmsford campus.

The Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab has 16 terminals, four screens showing Bloomberg News, BBC World, CNBC and Sky News, and a “ticker” displaying share prices from stock markets worldwide.

Students can use the portfolio manager facility on Bloomberg – the world’s leading platform for global business and finance news, data, analytical tools and research – to trade and invest using virtual money.

This enables students to understand the strategies and techniques employed by real-life traders and investors as they aim to maximise portfolio returns.

Anglia Ruskin said:

“Our aim is to provide students with an experience as close as possible to a real financial organisation.
“The Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab allows our students to work on a broad range of financial, economic and accounting activities, including portfolio management, risk management, derivative markets, currency markets, financial engineering and corporate finance.  The rolling news channels also highlight how major developments have an immediate impact on the global economy.
“The fact our students are using the same platform as leading business, trading, finance and governmental institutions will give them confidence and, we hope, an advantage when they are applying for jobs with real financial institutions.”

In addition to various undergraduate and postgraduate business courses, the Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab will also be used to offer professional short courses in finance as well as special “trading events” for local schoolchildren.