Glen Bertram

BCom(Hons) LLB, Majors in Accounting and Finance, University Medal

Honours Thesis Topic

Hedge Fund Trading Strategies in particular equities long/short portfolios and statistical arbitrage

Current role

Associate Director, Fundamental Investment Group, UBS Investment Bank

RisMark is a new boutique property funds management business, part owned by the Liberman family and Macquarie Bank. Glen runs the capital markets part of the business which involves structuring and raising 3rd party debt and equity capital and investing this capital.

Testimonial

What I enjoyed most about my honours year is the intellectual stimulation, the ability to pursue a topic of interest, gaining an additional qualification and building friendships with like-minded people; people that work in the same field and will continue to have relationships with through my career.

With the benefit of hindsight, the aspects of the honours year that have helped me in my job and career development are quantitative skills. Not just the skills learnt in the honours year, but more importantly the skills to pursue independent learning later as required.

Advice for students contemplating honours

It's a great opportunity to develop skills that will be really important for your career. Spending an extra year at uni seems like a long time at that stage of your life, but really it is not, even for those people thinking purely on a financial basis, it is still worth it and it doesn't take long before you make up any lost income.

Many successful people do not make significant advancement in their careers until they are in their 30s - so you should view your 20s as training and an opportunity to develop your skills. Honours is a great way to do this.

Advice for combined law students

Law obviously gives you more options, you can pursue a career in law - but for anyone not planning to pursue a career in law, an honours year will be much more valuable. Six years of study is not a long time, but if you don't want to do that - consider making it 4 years and only doing honours. For many of the careers that honours graduates pursue such as M&A and trading, honours is much more valuable than law. Quantitative skills are the most important skills - you don't get these in law.