CBA Students Get a Lesson in Alternate Investments from Blackstone CFO

Michael A. Puglisi (CBA ’72) discusses the ins and outs of Blackstone’s IPO. Photo by Jeffrey Haynes

Students in Fordham’s College of Business Administration (CBA) got a lesson in private equity asset management and investment banking on April 22 from one of the best in the business.

The teacher was one of CBA’s most notable alumni, Michael A. Puglisi, CBA ’72, senior managing director and chief financial officer of the Blackstone Group.

Puglisi, who sits on the executive committee of the University’s President’s Council, explained the rationale that drove Blackstone to consider an initial public offering (IPO). He also touched on some of the key issues Blackstone addressed in completing its IPO in June 2007, a move that made headlines around the business world and left the firm’s top two partners with billions in profit.

“It was one heck of a ride and experience,” he told a diverse group of students on the Rose Hill campus. “It is the highlight of my career, and it’s my privilege to share it with you.”

Puglisi, who was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, traced his career from Fordham to Blackstone, a leading global alternative asset manager and financial services provider with $110 billion in assets under management.

“Alternative assets are the fastest growing segment of the industry,” he said.

He expounded on the pros and cons of going public and how the company drew the Chinese government as one of its IPO’s largest investors. He fielded questions from students on the present economy, the impact China is having on markets worldwide and, of course, how Blackstone picked the perfect time for an IPO.

“We got lucky,” Puglisi said. “We got out two weeks before the world collapsed under the sub-prime mortgage [crisis]. I’m not saying it isn’t tough for us now—it’s tough for everyone in the financial world.”

After the event, faculty and students praised Puglisi’s presentation, calling it both accessible and engaging.

“He is a natural professor,” said Donna Rapaccioli, dean of CBA. “He has the ability to take a very technical subject and describe it so that everyone walks away with a good understanding.”

—Gina Vergel

Bank Executive Urges Students to Look Abroad for Opportunities

Joseph P. Quinlan (left) speaks to the College of Business Administration Finance Society. Photo by Bruce Gilbert

Joseph P. Quinlan (GSAS ’84) didn’t open up his passport to students for inspection during his April 14 visit to Fordham’s Rose Hill Campus. But he may as well have.

Quinlan, managing director and chief marketing strategist of Bank of America Capital Management and a graduate of Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development Program(IPED), spoke for an hour with the College of Business Administration’s Finance Society.

In a discourse with the audience and incoming finance society vice president George Nader (CBA ’10), Quinlan touched on topics from his career to the economic recession. He made it clear that undergraduates should embrace opportunities outside the United States and even bypass Europe for destinations further east and south.

“I’m not going to criticize my colleagues on Wall Street, but I see too many people in my position and lower too focused on the U.S. So you know, there’s a U.S. steel analyst, a U.S. auto analyst; you can’t be that parochial and myopic today,” he said. “There’s one economy; it’s called the global economy, and there are different parts. Learn how to view it that way. If you’re U.S.-centric, particularly at your age, you’re missing the boat.”

To give students a sense of how important it is to understand the religions, cultures and political elements that affect the different parts of the global economy, Quinlan, who previously worked as director of economic research at Sea-Land Services, pointed out that 80 percent of the world’s output and 95 percent of its population exists outside of the United States.

“Geography is so underrated. We’re geographically illiterate; don’t be one of those people,” he said.

As for the sub-prime loan crisis and credit crunch that have been blamed as triggers for the recession, Quinlan said they were inevitable thanks to bad policy decisions made in Washington D.C.

“The problem was we were too lax with money. It’s not just that consumers spent too much; the regulators didn’t regulate enough,” he said.

“I was surprised, reading that E*Trade and H&R Block had to close their mortgage banks,” Quinlan continued. “Quite frankly, I didn’t know they had them until I read about them. But that was emblematic and symbolic that even they were giving out loans. So the Fed did a poor job regulating the financial environment.”

in 1981 and reaches more than 14,000 students at the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses.

The 2008 graduating class of the Fordham/Ailey BFA program drew enthusiastic, prolonged applause on April 14 as the cast of 20 dancers leapt, rolled and plied onstage for friends and family in their final performance.

The student artists performed in five choreographed numbers, including a world premiere work by Jacqulyn Buglisi, “Prologue for Five Songs,” a pastiche of musical styles ranging from blues to ragtime. Following the performance, held at the Ailey Citicorp Theatre, the dancers greeted family members and fellow students for a bittersweet finale.

“The reality that we’re graduating has hit me in parts, but I’m expecting it full swing any moment,” said Maresa D’Amore-Morrison, a senior from Boston.

The competitive four-year program, which received some 350 applications for the class of 2012, accepts approximately one out of every 10 applicants. The intimate nature of the program, according to its students, leads to close-knit relationships over the course of four years—especially in a field that is known for being competitive and demanding in terms of time, focus, energy and discipline.

“Because there are so few of us, there’s a real sense of camaraderie,” said Jeremy McQueen, a senior from San Diego, Calif. “You could say we’ve grown up together as dancers and now we’re getting ready to move into the real world.”

Since the Ailey/Fordham program also offers an academic curriculum, program director Ana Marie Forsythe said that a quarter of the dancers have earned academic minors along with their dance degrees, and one student is completing a double major.

“Having a Fordham degree is a very big safety net for a dancer,” Forsythe said. “It offers flexibility, and [some] end up using both parts of the degree—dance and academic.” Forsythe said that about half of the graduates have an apprenticeship or a company job.

D’Amore-Morrison will be apprenticing with the Urban Bush Women dance troupe in Brooklyn. McQueen will be joining a regional cast of the Broadway play Contact, but he adds that he would one day like to apply his concentration in media studies to a graduate degree in arts administration.

“I’d love to go to grad school, but right now my life is hectic as a professional dancer,” he said.

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Photo by Ken Levinson

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies, a.k.a. the Notorious Ph.D., drops a rhyme on April 12 at “Dr. N’s Second Annual Rhythm and Blues Review and Rockin’ Dance Party,” a fund raiser to benefit the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP).

The event also featured the Satin Dolls, Fordham’s first and only all-female a cappella group, and the Bronx River Rats, which featured vocalist and harmonica player John Hollwitz, Ph.D., professor of management systems in the Graduate School of Business Administration, and bassist Brennan O’Donnell, dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

The event raised more than $700 to support BAAHP, which is headed by the African and African-American studies department. The project aims to reconstruct a more accurate picture of life in the borough during one of the most tumultuous eras in American history. Among the subjects being studied are African immigration, jazz music and hip-hop in the Bronx from the 1930s to 1960s.

Silvio Balsalmo, director of IT risk and integrity, and his son, Nicholas, watch the action at the annual Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day on April 24 at the Rose Hill Gymnasium.

Nicholas was one of about 100 children who participated in the daylong event, which included various workshops, tours, athletic and craft activities and more. The event was organized by the Fordham University Association.

Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day program was founded more than 15 years ago to create an opportunity for girls and boys to share and communicate their expectations for the future.