Olin debuts new Bloomberg finance lab at library

Companies like to know students are trained on the Bloomberg.

—Timothy Solberg, professor of practice in finance and academic director of the corporate finance and investments platform

Olin’s Al and Ruth Kopolow Business Library debuted a new finance learning lab equipped with eight Bloomberg terminals and a large screen for the group. The project was three months in the making as workers renovated and rewired a room just inside the library’s entrance and equipped it with new furniture.

Dean Mark Taylor made an appearance to inspect the new lab on January 24 and mused aloud about the massive difference in today’s trading volume—and the size of individual trades—from the time he started as a market professional decades ago.

Madjid Zeggane, database analyst at Kopolow library, spearheaded the logistical work required to create the lab. He said Olin has 12 Bloomberg licenses and consolidated eight of its terminals into the new lab to facilitate collaboration among students and create a better training environment for a tool almost universally embraced by financial managers.

“Companies like to know students are trained on the Bloomberg,” said Timothy Solberg, professor of practice in finance and academic director of the corporate finance and investments platform.

He said the students who won the prestigious Quinnipiac finance competition nearly a year ago could have benefitted from the new lab because they could have easily uploaded the university portfolio they were managing and worked jointly, collaborating on their analysis.

“This is the way professionals do it,” Solberg said. The school conducted its first group training in on the terminals the morning of January 24.

Bloomberg terminals are sophisticated, text-intensive, multi-screen windows into real-time data about financial markets, news, stock quotes and other related information. In addition to the eight terminals in the lab, Olin has two laptops equipped with the Bloomberg software, another desktop terminal in Bauer Hall and another in the main library space.

Pictured above: Timothy Solberg working on a terminal along with Dean Mark Taylor under the guidance of Bianca Simonetti, Bloomberg’s account manager for the St. Louis area.