The Université de Sherbrooke today inaugurated the university’s new stock-exchange Trading Room in the Laboratory for Financial Education and Research (LEREF).

The creation of the Trading Room and the LEREF makes Sherbrooke the first university in Canada and one of the few in the world to offer this type of program covering the entire investment process.

To help finance the Trading Room and the LEREF’s activities, Ralph McLeod, chair of the Canadian Foundation for Investor Education, and Barbara Stymiest, CEO of TSX Group, jointly presented the university with a $100,000 donation.

“The Trading Room and the new lab offer a unique platform for perfecting the education of investors and keeping them at the forefront of financial sector knowledge and know-how. It is very important for us to be associated with this initiative,” said McLeod in a news release.

“We are very pleased to see an academic institution bring together under one roof all of the functions that are part of the investment process,” said Stymiest.

The Trading Room and the LEREF will have 48 work stations when completed and fully operational in 2005. They are being built at a cost of $5 million over five years. Students and researchers will have access to real-time financial data from sources such as Bloomberg, Reuters and Money Line Telerate. They will also have access to historical data from sources such as CanCorp and news from SEDAR or Dow Jones Interactive.

Federal and Quebec government programs will contribute $2 million to the financing of the Trading Room. Private partners, including the Canadian Foundation for Investor Education, will contribute a further $2 million with an additional $1 million to come from the university itself.