The Al Katami Trading Room at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business was named after Ahmad Abdul Aziz Al Katami, a Kuwaiti businessman who believed in women's emancipation, he encouraged all his eight daughters to pursue university degrees at the American University of Beirut and elsewhere. The dedication of the trading room took place on the 13th of May 2010 at OSB, in the presence of five of Al Katami's daughters who had studied at AUB. The Al Katami trading room, is connected to stock market news through Thomson Reuters, thus allowing professors, instructors and students to track market indices and stock prices, as though they were real brokers—without actually trading on the market. This facility provides the means to enrich student experience. Research databases and access to global financial resources allow students to link classroom lessons to actual securities and markets.
The Trading room aims to assist students, faculty and our financial community to have an overall understanding of the growing flow of financial data and its impact on financial markets and to develop and enhance the trading skills of students in stocks, futures, options, currencies and bonds. The trading room also provides help for students with the material covered in introductory finance courses, Business Finance and Financial Management. While the trading room staff can help students with learning the material, staff members are not permitted to provide students with answers to graded homework or take-home tests. Academic activities supported by the trading room include, but are not limited to, classroom instruction, video conferences, special presentation/events, data-feed workshops and simulation trading games. As a focal point for finance programs at the master’s and undergraduate levels, the trading room also serves as a test bed for the creation of innovative teaching techniques for all levels of education.