Government highlights importance of Ireland’s financial services sector with investment in strategic five-year industry/ academic research project

Tánaiste announces establishment of new €4.7million Science Foundation Ireland ‘Strategic Research Cluster’

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan T.D., has today (Wednesday, October 14^th 2009) announced the establishment of a new Science

Foundation Ireland (SFI) Strategic Research Cluster – the Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster (FMC²), involving a Government investment of over €4million.

The research activities of the FMC² research cluster will create a centre of financial research excellence by bringing together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science. Research at FMC² will initially concentrate on the development of theory and methods for the task of asset management to greatly enhance the development of, and future employment growth, in the international financial services industry in Ireland.

Announcing the funding and emphaising the strategic importance of FMC² the Tánaiste said “The IFSC currently generates approximately €22 billion in services exports annually. The International Financial Services Centre has been an outstanding success story in the Irish economy over the last 20 years, employing in excess of 25,000 people and generating 35% of our service exports. Today, the establishment of the FMC² SFI Strategic Research Cluster further builds on this and dispels any notion that scientific research and investment is primarily theoretical and somewhat removed from the day-to-day economic activity of our country. Global events of the past 18 months have shown us just how interconnected different sectors of our society really are in an economic content. Such interdependency highlights the need for diverse disciplines to converge and work in unison towards recovery. This new SFI Strategic Research Cluster does just that, as it brings together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science to create a multi-disciplinary research centre.”

The pioneering FMC² research cluster, is led by Professor Anthony Brabazon of University College Dublin (UCD), and will involve collaboration and engagement with a range of researchers in Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth, the University of Ulster, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Columbia University, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. In addition industry partners involved with FMC² so far are Pioneer Investments, Ryan Capital Ltd and The Institute of Bankers in Ireland.

The Tánaiste added “Science Foundation Ireland’s SRC programme has been connecting researchers with industry with the focus on the generation of new partnerships, research breakthroughs and commercial outputs. The Government has steadfastly continued and, indeed, significiantly expanded, its programme of strategic investment in our highly-skilled, scientific research base over the past decade. Such ongoing financial support is important in the context of initiating Ireland’s economic recovery, in maintaining our reputation internationally, and in signaling to the world that, notwithstanding a prevailing recession, Ireland’s capacity and ambition in the scientific field is unwavering.”

Professor Anthony Brabazon, head of the FMC² reserch team, re-iterating the strategic relevance of the centre to the financial services industry in Ireland said “Of course, firms in the IFSC are facing ever increasing pressures from competitors in other jurisdictions so we need to ‘up our game’ if we want to continue to grow employment in this sector. A key enabling factor is the deepening of the pool of high-calibre, financially-trained graduates with quantitative skills for employment in financial services firms.

This cluster forms a pivotal element of national infrastructure, creating a critical-mass research centre which will undertake research and training for the financial services industry. A prime objective of the research cluster is to support industry product and process innovation in order to grow employment in the financial services sector in Ireland. The cluster’s researchers will be working directly with our industrial collaborators in order to help achieve this goal.” he added.

Robert Richardson, CEO, Pioneer Investment Management Limited, Ireland said, “We are delighted to be a part of this project with University College Dublin and thank Science Foundation Ireland for their valuable support. For Pioneer Investments, research has always been central to our business model over the past 80 years. We are pleased with the opportunity to be able to provide our international industry expertise to this strategic collaboration. We are very optimistic that through this project we can further enhance our in-house quantitative research capabilities and contribute to the development of the quantitative research discipline in Ireland.”

Director-General of SFI, Prof. Frank Gannon, in welcoming the Tánaiste’s announcement, said “FMC² will provide expertise to the financial services sector. Focusing on the three fundamental elements of financial markets – risk, information and liquidity, FMC² will undertake world-class research in areas of strategic relevance to the financial services industry in Ireland. By training highly skilled PhD and post-doctoral researchers for the financial services sector, Ireland will be able to develop high-end asset management and financial products which will underpin the future development of the international financial services sector in Ireland, and foster employment growth in companies already located here as well as increasing the attractiveness of Ireland as a location for new foreign direct investment.”