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Teamwork, poise, and acumen guided a team of Chicago Booth students to first place at the 2008 UBS Investment Banking Case Competition November 8.
First-year students Matthew Thomas, Ritwik Samsi, Dilshad Kunnummal, and Swapnil Sinha each won a $5,000 scholarship and an interview with UBS for providing the best advisory solution among ten teams, including a second Chicago Booth team that finished third. “It was a great opportunity to compete with some of the best business schools in the country,” Thomas said. “It says a lot that Booth finished first and third, beating out teams from Wharton, Columbia, NYU and Michigan.”
The students were given six hours to analyze and discuss a case (including meeting with UBS bankers playing the roles of senior banker and CEO at a client company) and come up with a solution. The case was created by UBS bankers and mirrored a real-life situation that they faced recently, Kunnummal said. “It was really about working together as a team to find the most appropriate solution given the situation, and then presenting it to the client,” he said.
The participating bankers said the winning team asked them effective questions, Samsi said. “We were able to learn important information by asking probing questions, particularly around determining what direction the CEO wanted to take the company,” he said. “Significant portions of our recommended strategy evolved from those conversations. The bankers told us that the client-focus was a key differentiator.”
As with any case competition, the solution also mattered. “Another reason for our team winning was that our final recommendation was close to the actual strategy that the bankers came up with for the real-life situation,” said Thomas.
The judges said the team also displayed considerable composure during the presentation, particularly when its slide equipment malfunctioned midway through. “We received several compliments for handling the situation well and moving along with the presentation without getting flustered,” Thomas said.
The winning team members had worked together before at another competition, which helped tremendously, Kunnummal said. “The most important reason for us winning was that we understand each other and know how each of us works. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and what roles we would play. If somebody had a problem, we would rush over and help each other out. The team as a whole really pulled together when somebody was going through a difficult time.”
The victory was especially sweet because none of the team’s four members worked in investment banking previously, Samsi said. “Three of us worked in finance previously, but none in investment banking” he said. “It was very satisfying to go outside our circle of experience and win a competition.”
The competition provided real-life experience for Kunnummal who, like the others, hopes to enter investment banking. “One important takeaway was realizing the pressure that investment bankers face, particularly when working on tight deadlines. The importance of understanding the needs of the client was also a key learning point,” he said. “There’s no better experience than actually doing it,” Thomas added. “The UBS bankers said the competition was totally analogous to what they do on a daily basis.”
The members of the team that won third place were first-year students Mihir Shah, Adnan Azam, Alisa Decker, and Sanjay Patel. Other competing schools included The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, Columbia Business School, NYU Stern School of Business, and University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
—Phil Rockrohr