Blacksail Fund attracts industry pro for guidance

Blacksail Fund attracts industry pro for guidance

As the faculty advisor for the newly announced Blacksail Fund, Matt Slate '96 will bring to ECU almost 28 years of real-world experience to benefit the students in his classroom and those involved with the fund.

Thanks to a $1 million gift from Sanford Bailey '64 to the College of Business, the Blacksail Fund is a student-managed investment fund under faculty oversight. The students will gain firsthand experience managing a multi-strategy financial portfolio whose proceeds will pay for high-impact travel and other experiential activities outside the classroom.

Recently, Slate was the managing director of BofA Securities, where he was the senior trader in its Global Markets Division. He has worked within the Bank of America family of companies for 25 years with roles in various divisions, including commercial banking, operations, risk management and trading. Slate also serves as chair of the ECU Foundation Board of Directors and on the foundation's investment committee. He plans to borrow from his experiences and apply them to the Blacksail Fund.

"What we're trying to design is something that gives students opportunities to invest real dollars and to assess those investments to make decisions of when they take profits and how to deal with losses," said Slate.

Slate quickly points out that there is still a lot of work to do when setting up the fund. A student structure will have to be decided on about who's making investment decisions and how. Will there be an advisory board, and how would it look? How will investment reports look, and when will they be issued?

"Ultimately, we need to ask ourselves what we're trying to do," said Slate. "We're trying to give students practical opportunities to invest real dollars in the market and build the skillsets that differentiate their story while at ECU, which will prepare them for a very competitive field as they enter their next phase."

"If we can set the fund up to correctly mimic what you would see in an asset management firm, the students will have stories to tell future employers," said Slate.

What will those stories be?

The way the Blacksail Fund is structured, stories will most assuredly abound when it gets up and running.

Obviously, there will be stories that come from the trips. Seniors Pierson Elwell and Gregory Sharafinski's October visit to New York led to an additional trip to New York for a cryptocurrency conference. Arthur Graduate School IMBA student Jenna Scott hand-delivered her resume to a music company executive. During a San Francisco trip students met with and heard from Rodney Turner, an ECU graduate and Cisco senior director.

When it comes to working on the fund, Slate hopes the students will be able to relay their stories when they meet with potential employers.

"What I hope comes out of it are practical experiences that make our students materially more attractive from a skillset perspective," said Slate.

"I believe this (gift) will result in higher levels of achievement after leaving the college experience and broaden students' contact bases, which is so important as they enter the competitive job market," said Bailey.

The Blacksail Fund gift also includes purchasing a Bloomberg terminal, a database that gives students access to news, data, insights and trading tools to help with financial decisions. The gift, as COB Dean Mike Harris says, will position the college as a desired destination for students who want to enter the financial industry.

"We're raising the bar regarding experiential learning and other experiences here in the college," said Harris. "As we grow, our alumni expect more. Their support makes the college more competitive and attractive to students."

Harris adds that the Blacksail Fund will be another way for our investors to give back to the COB once the fund is established.

MORE BLOGS