A University of Aberdeen Business School student has scooped a top prize and £1,000 for his MSc dissertation.
Andrew Marshall was awarded the Investment Property Forum Educational Trust (IPFET) dissertation prize for the best MSc dissertation on a topic in real estate investment and finance. The prize was awarded for the third time.
Andrew wrote the dissertation as part of the MSc Finance and Investment Management programme. He entered this programme in 2011 after he completed an undergraduate degree in Property and Spatial Planning at the University of Aberdeen. Andrew started recently working for a real estate consultancy in Dubai, which provides advisory to real estate developers and investment funds.
Andrew’s dissertation was chosen from seven entries by a panel of academics from the Business School in liaison with a representative from IPFET.
Andrew’s dissertation "Does the level of inflation affect returns in Real Estate Investment Trusts within the UK market?" examines the relationship between the inflation rate and the return rates of companies active in the real estate sector.
Dr Rainer Schulz, Senior Lecturer in Real Estate in the Business School, said: “Understanding the relationship between inflation and return rates of financial assets is of great importance to investors with liabilities in real terms. Examples of such investors include pension funds that promise defined benefits to policyholders in the future. Real estate, as a real asset, should have the potential to provide a hedge against inflation risk. As direct investments are illiquid and management intensive, indirect investments in listed real estate could provide a better way to obtain inflation hedging benefits for the average investor.”
“He was a worthy winner of the prize.”
The IPFET prize is for dissertations written in the final stage of the academic year and to be considered for the prize, students must deliver an outstanding dissertation in Real Estate (BU5904) or Finance (BU5903) on a real estate investment and finance topic.
To find out more about the IPF, the IPFET, and suitable dissertation topics, visit http://www.ipf.org.uk or contact Dr Rainer Schulz r.schulz@abdn.ac.uk