Meet Alec Lu, one of the impressive winning team members from our 2024 Investment Competition. As his prize, Alec chose an internship with QIC, and has since started another internship with Platinum Asset Management. Here he shares his experience and highlights from the competition and internships.
My name is Alec and I’m a 21-year-old student at the University of Sydney, studying Finance and Computer Science. In my spare time, I like to stay active through the gym and volleyball, as well as play music, including violin and acoustic guitar. Lately I’ve been getting into electric guitar too, which has been a fun and rewarding new hobby.
I first heard about Future IM/Pact through the UNIT, a student society that works with Future IM/Pact to run the investment competition. I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in the competition, and I would say the most valuable aspects included getting feedback on our investment pitch from a panel of highly experienced investors, and having the opportunity to win internship prizes with leading investment management firms.
Investment management is deeply interesting to me as it offers the opportunity to work in a challenging and dynamic environment where you’re dealing with uncertainty and rewarded for your curiosity. Furthermore, being able to critically analyse different businesses spanning private markets and public markets, and interact with management teams even at the junior level is also greatly appealing to me.
The investment competition was both a challenging and rewarding experience as it allowed me to work in a highly competitive environment alongside very driven teammates. I found the presentation component the most rewarding, where we had the opportunity to pitch and defend a thesis that we worked hard on, to a panel of experienced investment management professionals.
The most challenging component of the competition was the time management, where we had limited time to complete the presentation whilst balancing university commitments. However, this proved to be a learning experience, where my team learnt how to allocate work efficiently and prioritise tasks.
My biggest advice would be to continuously ask questions throughout the competition, whether to yourself or to your teammates, about the business and your investment thesis. This will help you identify areas that your presentation or thesis does not fully address, and prepare you for questions that will likely be brought up during the presentation.
Being surrounded by mentor figures who take time to guide you, whilst also providing you with the autonomy to work on your ideas independently, has accelerated my learning and development
Over the past summer, I completed a 6-week internship at QIC in their Global Infrastructure team. I chose QIC due to their expertise within the infrastructure and broader real assets space, which I was greatly interested in. More recently, I have started an internship with another Future IM/Pact partner, Platinum Asset Management, where I’ve gotten exposure to public markets and investing across international equities.
Throughout my internships, the people at the firms have undoubtedly been a core reason in making my experience enjoyable. Being surrounded by mentor figures who take time to guide you, whilst also providing you with the autonomy to work on your ideas independently, has accelerated my learning and development. I truly believe there is no better place to learn than in an environment where you are surrounded by people that encourage you to ask questions and stay curious.
Additionally, at both internships, I have been fortunate enough to be brought into meetings with management teams of businesses and research teams from other financial institutions. This has been a great experience to connect with people across the industry, and gain insight into the human and relationship-driven side of investing, beyond just the technical aspects of the work.
Throughout my two internships, I’ve had various mentor figures. At QIC, I was very fortunate to have Jaimala as my mentor, who guided me throughout my research tasks and helped me develop a well-rounded understanding of the infrastructure asset management space. At Platinum, it has been an amazing experience to be under the mentorship of Manroop and Julia, who have helped me develop a systematic way of thinking about businesses and investing.
There are many more people I have not mentioned, but I am deeply grateful to everyone I’ve worked with and learnt from across these experiences.
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One of the most valuable aspects of the Investment Competition was getting feedback on our investment pitch from a panel of highly experienced investors
Future IM/Pact is a collaborative initiative across the investment management industry aimed at increasing representation of female investors and creating workplace cultures where everyone can flourish.
Future IM/Pact is a collaborative initiative across the investment management industry aimed at increasing representation of female investors and creating workplace cultures where everyone can flourish.
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