You Should Have Been There for the ACG Cup
by “Should Have Been There Guest Blogger” Larry Blumsack, President, Zoka Institute
Impressive presentations by teams of MBA student representing Babson, BU, BC and MIT marked the final round of the first ACG Boston Cup held at MIT on Thursday, February 26th. This was a definite “you should have been there ACG event” for a glimpse of potential future talent for ACG. I’m sure even the most seasoned M&A professionals could have picked up point or two.
This annual M&A case study competition for MBA students originated with the Los Angeles chapter. It is a two round competition. Round one was hosted at each participating schools with teams within each school competing against each other. The winners of round one went on to the final round held at MIT.
In round one, the competing teams – at all schools – in the roles of investment bankers are given the same case study. They must then analyze and provide strategy recommendations to a potential purchaser based on the business issue presented in the case study. The potential purchasing company in round one is a number of ACG members serving as competition judges at each of the schools.
For the finals, the school teams were giving a new case study. Both case studies revolved around the potential purchase of companies in the fashion industry.
So here we were at MIT, to find out whether or not the Sox Group should purchase FashionCo based the recommendation of the “investment bankers” from Babson, BC, BU or MIT.
The Sox Group was a formidable team of seasoned and tough M&A professionals -
Jim Beakey – Nautic Partners, Jeff Bistrong – Harris Williams – Tom Shields, Shields & Co.,
Tibor Toth – Babson Capital Management and Jim Wilder – Housatonic Partners. They put the four school teams through their paces with tough questions challenging the financial, competitive, industry and projected analyses that each team come up with. The Sox Group – five ACG members, also the judges were faced with their own tough analyses in choosing who were the 1st through 4th place winners.
The level of all the competitive presentations was high and in the end, clearly, at least for me confirmed by the judges’ decision, Babson was the winner of the ACG Boston Cup.
Click here to learn more about the ACG Boston’s ACG Cup 2009!
