Skip to main content

School Outreach Brexit Sessions Lead to Henley Award Win at BETT Conference 2017

I86 A2679

Henley Business School has won the JISC VC Partnership Award for work with schools and other universities through videoconferencing, presented at the BETT Conference on 25 January 2017.

JISC are a UK higher education, further education and skills sector not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions. The award commends the use of videoconferencing to provide opportunities to schools which would not otherwise be possible in their own classroom.

As part of the programme, ICMA Centre academic Dr Simone Varotto delivered interactive sessions to schools across the UK asking them to imagine themselves as CEOs of large banks and devise their own Brexit strategies.

The students came up with a wide range of ideas. Mark Rutherford School decided that they would keep operations in the UK for the foreseeable future due to the level of uncertainty, whereas The Corsham School wanted to push for freedom of trade with the EU and open up trade with growing economies. Since the sessions a number of London-based banks announced moving jobs from the UK to other parts of the EU.

“They really enjoyed it,” one teacher commented “I feel that this pushed them out of their comfort zone and made them look at something that was quite challenging for them”.

Participating schools included:

  • Sir Thomas More 6th Form College, Nuneaton
  • Caludon Castle School, Coventry
  • Sir Thomas Wharton Community College, Doncaster
  • The Corsham School, Wiltshire
  • Mark Rutherford School, Bedford
  • Ilford County High School, Essex

The award was presented at the British Educational Training & Technology (BETT) show at London Excel and collected by Henley academic Associate Professor Joe Doak, who was involved in some of the sessions alongside Professor Gavin Parker.

Find out more about Dr Simone Varotto's research

Professor Simone Varotto

Professor of Finance
Published 27 January 2017

You might also like

The adoption of futures contracts on Bitcoin: A new era of cryptocurrency

27 November 2017
According to the Financial Times, 31st October 2017, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is expected to offer cash-settled futures contracts on Bitcoin by the end of 2017. CME, the world’s largest exchange by market value, has offered futures contracts on agricultural products, metals, energy, equity indexes, foreign exchange rates, interest rates, real estate, and even weather. With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, the CME has finally decided to enter into the unregulated digital asset market. Futures contracts on Bitcoin may help investors to either hedge or speculate on the future price of Bitcoin. Because almost all futures contracts are cash-settled in CME, traders do not need to actually deliver Bitcoin.

Henley Public Lecture: Dr Andreas Hoepner discusses the myth of outperforming “sin firms”

2 March 2016
Professor of Finance at the ICMA Centre Dr Andreas Hoepner addressed an audience of Henley Business School students and external visitors at this year’s Henley Business School Public Lecture.

Curved Momentum: A new trading strategy for commodity futures

26 January 2018
Momentum trading is a popular strategy in the commodity futures markets. The idea is simple. Suppose that an investor wants to invest in the first nearby contract of several commodity markets, e.g. crude oil, live cattle and gold. At the end of each month, the trader ranks these assets according to their past return performance, observed over a measurement period of 12 months for example, from the top performing asset to the bottom performing asset. The investor opens a long position in the first nearby of the markets that performed well and a short position in the first nearby of the markets that underperformed. These positions are held throughout the next month. This strategy has performed historically well historically and has attracted the interest of investors.