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ICMA Centre
Established	1991
Type	Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Executive Education, Research
Dean	Prof.John Board
Staff	ca.59
Students	ca.250
Undergraduates	ca.50
Postgraduates	ca.200
Doctoral students	ca.18
Location	Reading, United Kingdom
Campus	Whiteknights Campus
Affiliations	REUTERS, CFA INSTITUTE, FINRA, PRMIA, EURO MTS, The ICMA Centre is supported by the International Capital Market Association (ICMA), Zurich.
Website	www.icmacentre.ac.uk/

The ICMA Centre is a centre of higher education based in Reading offering undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education tailored to the capital markets industry.

Established in 1991 with funding provided by the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) in Zurich through a partnership with the University of Reading, the Centre is housed in a purpose-built modernist building, and was formally opened in March 1998 by Sir Brian Unwin, then President of the European Central Bank.

The Centre's facilities include two dealing rooms where students learn how markets really function and apply theory through simulations. The Centre also contains a 120-seat lecture theatre, several seminar rooms, information seating area and café bar. The upper floor of the Centre houses the administrative and academic staff and doctoral researchers.

In 2008, ICMA invested a further £5 million, which funded an expansion to the building. The extension includes an additional 50 seat dealing room - the largest in Europe – which is sponsored in part by Reuters, as well as a 170 seat lecture theatre, new seminar rooms and a dedicated research area. The building is fitted with audio and visual technology allowing the podcasting and webstreaming of lecture content. The new building opened for students at the start of the 2009-2010 academic session.

ICMA’s investment in the Centre now totals over £10 million, making it the largest single corporate investment in any European business school.^[1]

[edit] Dealing Rooms

At the ICMA Centre, the dealing rooms complement the theoretical learning in a way which is not possible at other institutions.^{[citation needed]} The ICMA Centre was the first business school in Europe to have a dealing room facility of this kind and is still the only university with a facility on such a scale.^[2] In 1994, a 20 terminal dealing room was opened and then on completion of the new building in 1998 a further two dealing rooms (Reuters I and II) opened with 62 workstations running the latest Reuters products – 3000 Xtra and the new Reuters Traders product. These are complemented by a Bloomberg terminal, which provides an ideal tool for fixed income research.

Research and project work are further supported by economic and financial data from Datastream, ICMA and other sources and a host of analytical, mathematical and statistical software. Reuters I also features a 50’’ plasma screen displaying live market prices and news.

The ICMA Centre will soon be the largest non-investment bank Reuters populated facility in the world when a further 50 station workstation flagship dealing room (sponsored in part by Reuters) opens in October 2008. The Centre will have a total of 112 workstations, which is the size of a medium sized investment bank’s dealing floor.^[3]

These rooms are not merely training centres for traders of the future; they enable staff to combine theory and practice across a whole range of activities, whether in derivatives trading, portfolio management, risk management, financial engineering or corporate finance.

The dealing rooms are also used for a wide range of computing work throughout the programmes, including Excel spreadsheet modelling, Monte Carlo simulation, financial econometrics and sessions on market microstructure. Many dealing room sessions are conducted by former market practitioners with academic credentials who are able to draw on personal experience in the capital markets for their teaching.

[edit] External links

• Official Website of the ICMA Centre
• Official Website of the International Capital Market Association

[edit] References

Coordinates: 51°26′33″N 0°56′48″W / 51.4424°N 0.9466°W / 51.4424; -0.9466