BUFFALO, NY – Richard A. Shick, PhD, interim dean of the Richard J. Wehle School of Business, has named Steven A. Gattuso ’87, MBA ’88, director of the Golden Griffin Fund (GGF) at Canisius University and an instructor in the Department of Economics and Finance. Gattuso began work at the college on July 1.
Gattuso is a former assistant vice president – portfolio manager for M&T Bank Corporation/Wilmington Trust. In this role, he made investment decisions for assigned customer portfolios based on bank philosophy and customer objectives. Gattuso also performed portfolio analyses to determine portfolio risk, return and term payments, and developed long and short term investment strategies.
In addition to his career in the finance industry, Gattuso served more than a decade as an adjunct professor in the College of Business at Niagara University. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses in finance and accounting, including corporate financial policy, managerial finance accounting and strategic accounting.
An alumnus of Canisius University, Gattuso earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science in 1987, and a master’s degree in business administration (finance) in 1988. He is a certified chartered financial analyst (CFA), a certified financial planner (CFP) and a certified management accountant (CMA.) Gattuso currently serves as president of the CFA Society of Buffalo.
The Golden Griffin Fund (GGF) at Canisius is the college’s first real-money equity investment fund managed by undergraduate and graduate finance majors. It is a six-credit, two-semester course designed to educate students about the inner-workings of the capital markets and provide them with real-world learning experiences in investment research and portfolio management.
Established in 2003, the Golden Griffin Fund is a student-run investment management program that gives the fund managers the opportunity to make real investments using real money. GGF students select potential companies in which to invest, manage and analyze portfolio holdings (stocks), and evaluate and recommend companies to add to the portfolio. The fund is currently valued at approximately $280,000.
The Golden Griffin Fund is housed in the Nelson D. Civello ’67 Family Financial Markets Lab (FML). The facility supports the college’s business programs, especially finance and economics, by providing students hands-on learning experiences with state-of-the-art tools and information. Equipped with many of the same technological tools-of-the-trade used on Wall Street, the Financial Markets Lab includes a four-color ticker display, which provides news headlines and current stock and index prices; four LCD panels, which connect to live market broadcasts or can be used by faculty to display teaching materials; and Smart Board technology. The showpiece of the Financial Markets Lab is the Bloomberg terminal. Used by professionals throughout the financial markets industry, the Bloomberg system is a leading information service for global financial markets. The terminal provides live market data and news information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and stores information on virtually every public and private company. Students trained on the Bloomberg system qualify to sit for the Bloomberg Essentials Certification Exam.
One of 28 Jesuit universities in the nation, Canisius is the premier private university in Western New York.
