UPDATE | On Campus

ASAP Students to Manage More Than $40 Million
for University of Wisconsin System

Students in the Applied Security Analysis Program (ASAP) of the School of Business are now authorized to manage more than $40 million in fixed-income securities for the University of Wisconsin System. The new total of approximately $44 million total assets under management is the largest pool of capital managed by students of any university in the world. (In addition, ASAP manages approximately $3 million in equities and REIT funds.)

In October, the Business and Finance Committee of the UW Board of Regents voted to allow the ASAP program to manage approximately $20 million for investment in nominal U.S. Treasuries and approximately $11 million allocated to Treasury Inflation Protection Securities (TIPS). These allotments were in addition to approximately $10 million in fixed-income securities that ASAP students had already been successfully managing for the UW System since 1998.

“The ASAP program has proven that it can provide competitive returns in an actively-managed bond portfolio setting,” said Regent Charles Pruitt of Milwaukee, chair of the Regents’ committee. “This has convinced Trust Funds’ investment staff, and obviously our committee, that ASAP should be able to effectively manage these additional portfolios. The process also provides students with valuable, real-world experience.”

Professor Mark Fedenia, the academic director of the ASAP program since 1986, said that the Regents’ decision to increase fixed-income assets under management “is exciting beyond the sheer size of the portfolio. Students will now experience the additional complexity of managing money in multiple portfolios with differing investment objectives. I am confident that our students will live up to the enormous responsibility placed with them.”

UW Regent President David Walsh, BBA ’65, said the Board of Regents was pleased to help enable ASAP program students to experience “real-life investment opportunities. This is consistent with UW-Madison’s commitment to research and education. It is another reason why UW-Madison is truly one of the great public universities and its School of Business is a nationally recognized business school.”