Virtual Wall Street exchange floor for university

THE buzz of the famous Wall Street stock exchange floor is coming to Limerick.

A virtual trading floor is to be installed in a new financial building at the University of Limerick (UL).

Students will be able to scurry around frantically trading hypothetical share portfolios once that famous bell rings.

The trading floor will form part of an extension to the Kemmy Business School (KBS) at the university which is under construction. It will be the first university campus in this country to replicate a financial markets trading floor situation.

The new building, which covers 5,000 square metres, has been designed with the needs of the senior undergraduate and postgraduate business student in mind.

As well as the financial markets trading floor, it will have a 350-seat lecture theatre, interactive lecture theatres, a dedicated computer lab exclusively for use by KBS students, restaurant facilities, executive teaching suites and a student enterprise centre.

Construction is being carried out by Tom Hayes Ltd of Killaloe and the building has been designed by RKD Architects.

It is due for completion by the end of the year.

On completion this new facility will allow the Kemmy Business School to consolidate at the west of the campus with a total floor area of 9,800 square metres between the new building and the existing Schuman building.

Prof Donal Dineen, dean of the Kemmy Business School, said: “The ‘real-time’ fully functional financial markets trading floor will emphasise and build up on the strong industry orientation of the financial services programmes offered in the school.”

Exclusive to the Irish university sector, Prof Dineen said the trading floor would be managed by a select group drawn from the finance faculty in the school.

“They will combine senior-level practical experience of the international financial markets with doctoral-level qualifications from the leading international business schools in the quantitative finance discipline,” he said.

Students will be able to manage “hypothetical” investment portfolios as if they were actually trading financial instruments on a Wall Street or City of London-type trading floor.

The facilities, Prof Dineen said, would be a significant boost to the university’s reputation as a natural partner of the corporate sector.