Genus Capital Management is committed to initiatives aimed at developing the workforce of tomorrow. We believe the experience young professionals can get early on in their career is paramount to their future success.
Central to these initiatives is our internship program, allowing students to gain real-world experience working in our fast-paced environment, with guidance and insights given to the interns from many facets of our business.
One of our past interns, Sebastian Bratu, shared his experiences working with Genus.
In Sebastian Bratu's Words
Thanks to the partnership between MITACS and the Haskayne School of Business, I had an excellent opportunity to work during the Winter semester at Genus Capital Management, a Vancouver-based investment manager. The richness in learning as well as the broad application of knowledge gained on the job made this opportunity a unique and valuable experience for an undergraduate student. It has meaningfully enhanced my degree in Finance and Economics.
Responsibilities and Experiences
As a Fintech and ESG Investment Analyst I took on a variety of tasks with both short-term and long-term goals. One of my first big projects was to help compile, organize, and submit key information for Genus’ B-Corp recertification process, a key certification for the company that expands its impact as a sustainable and socially oriented investment manager. We delivered the recertification process by the deadline and achieved a recertification score that far exceeded the previous one.
Another task was the research and analysis of the Fossil Free portfolio strategies. I explored relationships between the performance of key funds looking for statistically significant insights that could influence portfolio optimization. Going through this experience taught me some of the complications in creating a high-performance investment strategy that also meets sustainability-oriented objectives.
Another project that I completed at Genus was due diligence for private market fixed income impact investments. I helped put together summaries of investment notes for investors and portfolio managers to use in determining their participation in a new fund. This was the most involved project during my time at Genus, requiring information from multiple teams and understanding how to build a concise and useful investment report for the investing audience.
Learning & Collaboration
Part of the value at Genus was the ability to work on advanced portfolio management problems, researching, sharing ideas, and brainstorming with some of the curious and skilled portfolio managers and analysts in capital markets. This was especially true of my Fossil Free fund strategy research, where Thomas Holloway and I worked to understand key characteristics of the Fossil Free strategies, such as the performance of the value factor and dividend equities.
This experience provided me with unique insight into how portfolio managers construct sustainable and values-based portfolios while also focusing on return and risk objectives. The experience allowed me to apply statistical methods, some from my university courses and others which I hadn’t seen before, that were useful in a capital markets setting.
