Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Annual Report 2010

For Frankfurt School, 2010 has been a year of highlights. The faculty has expanded again. New courses have been launched, most notably our Executive MBA and Bachelor of Management & Financial Markets for Professionals. The UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance is making good progress. Our institutional accreditation has been approved, and we have extended our Executive Education Programme. In actual fact, every department at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management has launched new activities this year, bringing FS still closer to our goal of becoming a research-focused business school. In this annual report, we take great pleasure in presenting some of the high points of 2010.

Professional programmes
Our continuing education courses for bank employees who wish to qualify as banking specialists, banking administrators or management specialists are as popular as ever: they offer a springboard to a career with genuine prospects. New legislation passed in 2010 allows managers and senior executives with appropriate professional experience and qualifications to enrol on a Master’s degree course. The professional training courses offered by Frankfurt School are a perfect fit for such career-driven educational ambitions.

Frankfurt School offers a number of Master’s courses which can be added conveniently to our professional programmes:

ConCap Connective Capital
ConCap Connective Capital was completely reorganised in 2010. The subsidiary now concentrates on developing products for private and institutional clients working in Impact Finance. Our first product, the FinAcc Fund was successfully launched in autumn 2010. The fund invests in small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries. The first investments were made in Peru, Mexico and Azerbaijan. In addition to an attractive financial return, our investments also seek to generate a positive social return, for example by helping to alleviate poverty through their social impact.

The Frankfurt New Business Fund is another ConCap product. This fund supports entrepreneurs in the city of Frankfurt am Main by providing finance for new business start-ups. The fund is subsidised by the City of Frankfurt, which underwrites 80% of each loan issued by the fund. Since the fund was launched in June 2010, twelve loans (averaging EUR 25,000 each) have been approved. The new businesses are truly innovative, with ideas ranging from Caribbean cookery schools to specialist tailoring services to online games. The role of ConCap is to find entrepreneurs, review their business plans and make them “bankable”. Plans are afoot to extend the concept – currently unique in the German marketplace – to other towns and cities.

Efiport
efiport AG – a Frankfurt School subsidiary which designs and manages e-learning services – developed a new strategy and corporate image during 2010. One of the largest projects managed by efiport last year related to the merger of Commerzbank with Dresdner Bank. As the two banks integrate their operations, it is important to prepare all managers and staff at Dresdner Bank for the major changes involved. Since early 2010, a series of training courses has been delivered through the Commerzbank training portal CLiCNET under the slogan “Gemeinsam Startklar” [All Ready for Take-off]. efiport AG manages the portal as the main application services provider. CLiCNET is used to provide study materials in the form of web-based training courses, online textbooks and learning outcome reviews, as well as “Startklar Checks” [Take-off Checks] – online training events which enable employees to check how well they know their subject matter.

Corporate programmes & services
… blowing our own trumpet…
In 2010, our Corporate Programmes & Services (FP&S) unit set up a number of Centres of Competence. In each unit, our experts design specialised training programmes which can be further tailored to the individual needs of prospective clients, taking into account both the client’s specific objectives and any existing knowledge possessed by course participants. The Centres keep track of current market movements, regulatory and legislative changes, and relevant trends. These observations are discussed with academic staff in the faculty and then swiftly and expediently transformed into training projects. This process enables our FP&S unit to match up-to-the-minute research results with clients’ practical requirements. The Centres include:

Education Management
Our Education Management unit supports the many activities associated with vocational training, from the management of applications for trainee positions through to in-house training courses for new recruits. Frankfurt School currently looks after 3,500 trainees across Germany. In 2010, we acquired a new client: Sparda Bank Hessen. Frankfurt School lecturers prepare the bank’s trainees for their banking examinations using our own course material. More details

Executive Education
Frankfurt School added a number of certification programmes to an already broad portfolio, focusing in particular on areas of general management relevant to multiple business sectors. These include Audit Management, Fraud Management, Security Management and Compliance Management. We also added a large number of new seminars to our Executive Education timetable.

In 2010, our new Certified Executor programme added a new dimension to our Securities Investments & Risk Provisioning portfolio. Since mid-2008 tax consultants, auditors, asset managers and independent financial services providers have been allowed to offer executorship services to and act as executors for their clients as part of their general legal services remit. On September 1, 2009 the new Inheritance and Gift Tax Act came into force in Germany, bringing with it further changes. Frankfurt School responded to this development in autumn 2010, by launching a new Certified Executor certification programme. And a new two-part certification course – our Certified Sustainability Investment Advisor/Manager programme – focuses on finance and sustainability.

During the year, Frankfurt School also worked with Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V. (DAI) to set up a key programme for training members of supervisory boards. New legislation means that increasingly, supervisory board members – nowadays much more numerous than in the past – are being made personally liable for their financial misdemeanours, as well as those of the executive board members they are supposed to oversee. The new regulatory provisions are very complex, hence not easy to grasp. With the help of our Excellence programme, supervisory boards can equip themselves to meet these challenges.

Faculty and university programmes
Institutional accreditation and the right to bestow doctorates
On February 1, 2010 the German Science Council accredited Frankfurt School for ten years, i.e. the maximum statutory period. And towards the end of the year, the Federal State of Hessen extended Frankfurt School’s right to award doctorates by another five years. More

A growing faculty
In 2010 Frankfurt School appointed a total of seven new professors! More

Frankfurt School welcomes Nobel Prize winners
No less than two Nobel Prize winners gave on-campus talks during 2010. On June 23, Elinor Ostrom – who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009 – gave a lecture on “Future Directions in Social-Ecological Systems Research”.

And on November 17, James Buchanan, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986, spoke on the subject of “The Limits of Market Efficiency”.

DFG Research Group
In 2010, the remit of DFG Research Group FOR 655 was extended for another three years: Hartmut Kliemt is currently the Group’s deputy speaker. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding a number of posts – including a doctoral research post – for the next three years.

Other FS research projects
The Frankfurt Institute for Risk Management and Regulation (FIRM) is sponsoring the research project “What objective function follows the creation of credit ratings? Implications for financial market stability and regulation” headed up by Professor Dr. Christina E. Bannier. In collaboration with ZEW the Center for Practical Quantitative Finance also launched a research project on the subject of “Structural changes in capital markets and their impact on bank lending”.

Professors Strohhecker and Sibbel receive an honourable mention in the competition for the Hessian University Prize for Excellence in Teaching 2010
In the announcement accompanying the Hessian University Prize for Excellence in teaching 2010, Hessen’s Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts honoured Professor Dr. Rainer Sibbel and Professor Dr. Jürgen Strohhecker for their Operations Management teaching module, which was ranked among the top 12 of a total of 57 entries.


Professor Dr. Jürgen Strohhecker	Professor Dr. Rainer Sibbel

New university courses
In 2010 we launched two new Master’s degree courses: our Master in Risk Management and Regulation and our Executive MBA programmes. For bank employees who have already gained appropriate vocational qualifications on continuing or further education courses, we also offer our new Bachelor of Management & Financial Markets for Professionals degree course – a special learning format which enables students in full-time employment to graduate with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in just three semesters of part-time study.

10 Frankfurt School students despatched to New York as UN delegates.
Representatives of the Frankfurt School student initiative “FS Model United Nations” took part in the annual UN simulation, the National Model United Nations. More

Frankfurt School Verlag
Frankfurt School Verlag enjoyed a very successful 2010, reflecting in particular the positive outcome of our decision – taken the previous year – to focus on banking and finance as our key areas, a decision which has proved popular with readers and rewarding for our steadily growing roster of joint-venture partners.

Banking & Finance
In our core activity we continued to pursue our “by professionals for professionals” approach, of which our new publication Compliance in Banken [Compliance in Banking] is an excellent example. The editor, Oliver Jost, is a senior manager at a major German bank.

Green Finance
This year we launched our new annual conference series on “Nachhaltige Geldanlagen” [Sustainable Financial Investment] in cooperation with KfW Bankengruppe. The first conference took place at the KfW head office.

Series of events with The Conference Board
Together with internationally renowned business organisation The Conference Board, we developed our own series of invitation-only events for the business community.

Africa Business
We recently broke new ground by developing the trilingual magazine AFRICA BUSINESS on behalf of Frankfurt School.

Our new academic e-journal: Rationality, Markets and Morals (RMM)
We continue to produce innovative academic and research publications, too. Frankfurt School Professors Hartmut Kliemt and Bernd Lahno are the editors of a new, open-access online journal published by Frankfurt School Verlag, entitled “RMM: Rationality, Markets and Morals – Studies at the Intersection of Philosophy and Economics”.

International Advisory Services (IAS)
UNEP Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Energy & Climate Finance
During 2010, we set up the UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance in a strategic joint venture with the United Nations Environmental Program. Professor Dr. Ulf Moslener was appointed as Academic Head of the Centre in November 2010. With a chair in Sustainable Energy Finance, Professor Moslener’s vigorous teaching and research activity helps to ensure that IAS projects become even more tightly integrated with the work of the faculty. Ulf Moslener’s own research focuses on climate finance, in particular measures for adapting to climate change and initiatives for reducing emissions.

In the latter half of 2010 the Centre successfully won tenders from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), KfW Klimaschutzfonds and Green For Growth Fund Southeast Europe. The IFC asked the Centre to analyse the potential of renewable energies as well as energy efficiency in Bangladesh and Nepal. Klimaschutzfonds needed advice on the design of a structured fund for the preliminary financing of income from the sale of emissions certificates. And in Macedonia, the IAS team helped IK Banka to implement a line of credit for financing renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

More IAS projects from around the world

At the end of October 2010 IAS won the tender for the EBRD Turkey MSME Lending Programme. The programme, which is organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, aims to assist Turkish banks in providing finance to MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) in less-developed and primarily agricultural areas of Anatolia.
The Syrian Fund for Project Finance is a programme financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is working with the Syrian Finance Ministry to make attractive long-term loans available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). IAS manages the line of credit and provides technical support to participating local banks, thereby helping to create jobs and promote environmental and climate-related projects.
Peruvian financial institution Confianza has grown so quickly that the microfinance specialist must now reorganise itself for greater efficiency. So in December 2010, the International Finance Corporation (IFC, a World Bank subsidiary) entasked IAS with improving risk management at Confianza, as well as reviewing and redesigning processes and instruments and providing staff with appropriate training.
The International Development Association (IDA) recently made funds available to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia for use in the Financial Sector Capacity Building Project organised by the National Bank of Ethiopia. The main objective of the mandate won by IAS is to strengthen the Ethiopian Academy of Financial Studies. Tasks include an analysis of the training and further education required by the country’s financial industry, and the development of suitable curricula and training materials. The project was launched in January 2010 and extended in August.

International activities
Centre Congolais-Allemand de Microfinance opens in Kinshasa
On January 15, 2010, Frankfurt School opened the Centre Congolais-Allemand de Microfinance (CCAM, Congolese-German Centre for Microfinance) on the campus of the Protestant University of Congo (UPC) in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. CCAM receives financial assistance from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and is one of five Centres of Excellence in Africa supported by the DAAD. The main focus of work at CCAM is on the Master of Microfinance degree course, which was launched back in October 2009 with 35 students. Descriptions and pictures of the launch event can be found here!

New partner universities
In 2010 Frankfurt School added four new partner universities to the roster of teaching and research institutions with which we cooperate. The University of Auckland in New Zealand is a welcome addition. The university possesses all three international business school accreditations (EQUIS, AMBA and AACSB – the “triple crown”!), hence is enormously popular with students. We also set up Erasmus partnerships with three European universities: Linköping University is our first Swedish partner university and this agreement has already born fruit – a student from Linköping is studying at FS and an FS student is spending his semester abroad at Linköping. Other Erasmus partners include the University of Bath in the UK and – of particular interest to French-speaking students – Euromed Marseille.

EFPA Deutschland
In November, Frankfurt School was involved in setting up the German affiliate of the European Financial Planning Association (EFPA). The launch ceremony took place on the Frankfurt School campus and Vice President Ingolf Jungmann was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee. The new affiliate aims to make it possible for students in Germany to take the association’s certified European degrees, thereby qualifying as European Financial Advisors (EFA) or European Financial Planners (EFP). Across Europe as a whole, more than 10,000 graduates have already been awarded these titles. EFPA Deutschland will also take care of EFPA interests in Germany by promoting high-quality standards in financial consultancy and planning.

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Annual Report 2010

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