On 17 July 2015, a total of 50 ILF students celebrated their graduation day with families and friends, the Board members, faculty members, staff and alumni of the ILF. The Class of 2015 comprising 39 students from the LL.M. Finance program and 11 students from the LL.M. International Finance program celebrated the completion of classes of the academic year 2014/15 at the official graduation ceremony held at the House of Finance.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Cahn, ILF Executive Director, opened the official graduation ceremony by welcoming more than 220 guests. He highlighted the internationality and diversity of the ILF graduating students who have studied and played hard together for the past 10 months since the very first day when they met each other for the first time at the Orientation Meeting. He proudly announced the completion of the inaugural year of the new LL.M. International Finance program with the very first group of 11 graduates, thereby setting a new milestone in the history of the ILF. He also thanked the sponsors and the lecturers for their continuous commitment and support of the ILF.
Prof. Dr. Georg Hermes, Dean of the Law Faculty, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, extended his warm congratulations to our graduates for their hard work put in during the year, wished them the best for the future and encouraged them to be in strong contact with the ILF and the University as future alumni.
Thereafter, the commencement speech was held by Mr. Carlos Montalvo Rebuelta, Executive Director of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). He spoke about the future of our graduates who will soon be working in a very global environment as lawyers, managers and leaders and their important roles in the current world where the financial crisis is still very present. He gave our students a few good words of advice based on his own past personal experiences to help them along their way.
The LL.M. Finance Class President, Ms. Eleni Mavrommati from Greece, and the LL.M. International Finance Class President, Mr. Ning Zhou, spoke about the classes and many special events that took place during the academic year 2014/15 and which brought their classmates from so many different nations, cultures and languages together. Both class presidents thanked their fellow classmates, sponsors, faculty and staff for causing them to be reminiscent of the good times which they have spent at the ILF.
The ceremony was followed by both Class Vice-Presidents, Mr. Filip Grle from Croatia and Ms. Weijia Shi from China, honoring the 4 lecturers from both the winter and the summer semesters with the Lecturer of the Year 2015 Award. They have been nominated by each group of students at the end of each semester.
Winter Semester:
LL.M. Finance: Dr. Klaus-Albert Bauer
LL.M. International Finance: Mr. Frank Herring
Summer Semester:
LL.M. Finance: Dr. Rüdiger Litten
LL.M. International Finance: Prof. Dr. Andreas Cahn
Finally, each student of the Class of 2015 was presented with his/her certificate and personally congratulated by Mr. Montalvo and Prof. Dr. Hermes during the commemorative certificates award ceremony.
At the end of the official ceremony, all guests were invited to the dinner and dance held at the Festsaal of the Casino Building on Campus Westend. At the dinner, the guests enjoyed a birthday cake celebrating the first birthday of the LL.M. International Finance program as well as 15-minute video made by Dr. Rolf Friedewald, ILF Managing Director, recapitulating the special events of the Class of 2015.
Congratulations to the Class of 2015!
