| Investment
Banking Club wins top prize in JP Morgan challenge
by
Deborah Leigh Wood
For the fifth time in six years, members of the Kellogg School
Investment
Banking Club beat their competition, the University of
Chicago Graduate School of Business, in the sixth-annual JP
Morgan M&A Challenge.
The Kellogg students
won the overall award in the 32-hour case competition, held
in January at JP Morgan's offices in downtown Chicago. Contestants
worked on a case created by the company based on an actual
deal. Eight Kellogg teams, composed of full-time and part-time
students, acted as investment banker advisers to their "client"
on bidding strategies and valuation in possibly acquiring
a paper and building products company.
"Kellogg
is very proud of the consistently outstanding performance of
its students in the Challenge," said Robert
A. Korajczyk, Kellogg School senior associate dean of curriculum
and teaching. "The results are a testament to their hard
work and the excellence of the Finance
Department's curriculum."
David
Stowell, one of the judges and a clinical associate professor
in investment banking at the Kellogg School, called the winning
teams well prepared. "It's amazing what they were able
to deliver in a short timeframe," he said. "They
delivered a 20-page solution, plus appendices of computations.
They didn't get much sleep, but that's the real world."
The short
deadline increased the level of excitement, said Steve Weiland
'05, who was on a winning team and is co-chair of the Investment
Banking Club. "Everyone can do the math, but coming up
with a fresh idea and communicating it well in a 15-minute
presentation to seasoned experts is where the challenge lay
and where we excelled."
In
addition to Weiland, members of the winning teams, which split
the $2,600 prize, are Kojo Appenteng, Bolade Atitebi, Danai
Brooks, Joshua Carson, Panaikorn Chartikavanij, Peggy Gan,
Michael Jakola, Adil Lalani, Parth Mehrotra, Chirag Saraiya,
Jason Scott, Benjamin Seguin, Brian Steinbrueck, Katsuhiko
Ushikubo, Guarav Wadhwa and Neal White. All are Class of '06
except Carson and Weiland, who are Class of '05.
|
