Another gold for business students
A team of undergraduate finance students from the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) won gold at the TD Bank Financial Group Case Competition, hosted by the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. This marks the fourth podium finish at TD Financial in as many years for JMSB, and the second gold.
Held on March 1 and 2, the final case of the competition was about venture capital. It concerned a private equity firm faced with having to make a decision about an investment that had gone sour. The recommendations made by Alexandra Duffy, Ludovic Jacques and Dinos Papoulias gave them a first-place finish by what the head judge described as “a very large margin, outclassing all the other teams.”
This group of students is part of a five-person team that has competed in five finance-focused competitions this year and has reached the podium every time. “They won gold in four of those competitions and silver in the other,” says Amr Ezzat, who coached them at this competition. He is one of three finance coaches who work with the team. The others are Reena Atanasiadis and Thomas Horvath. “It is a lot of fun coaching them. They spare no effort and just keep knocking it out of the park.”
“They are all exceptionally strong students with near-perfect GPAs,” he says. “Three of them are in the Kenneth Woods Portfolio Management Program (KWPMP) and they’ve all interned at top finance firms. Most have already signed full-time contracts at prestigious investment banks and money management firms. They are the cream of the crop.”
There is more to JMSB’s case competition success than simply recruiting brilliant students though. “It comes down to culture and training,” says Ezzat. “It all starts with the John Molson Competition Committee (JMCC) tryouts in the summer when Mark Haber and the coaches of each discipline identify the students who will best fit into the JMCC culture. These students train with Mark in class and with their coaches outside of class,” he says. “We have them go through countless and countless cases. We challenge them, we grill them. We push them really hard.”
“Our training program and the culture of determination we instill in our students has led to a lot of success in the many disciplines that we compete in. Not just finance,” says Haber, who has been head coach and advisor to the competition program for 17 years. “So far this year, we have also won gold in competitions focused on strategy, ethics, accounting and human resources. We’ve got 31 podium finishes across all categories. We are blessed with some terrific coaches, they are our secret weapon.”
Ezzat, a JMSB graduate who was part of the case competition program and the KWPMP during his studies, says that coaching is his way of giving back to Concordia. When asked if it is true that the JMCC has a secret weapon, Ezzat replied, “Of course. It’s Mark Haber.”
Related links:
• John Molson School of Business
• John Molson Competition Committee
• Kenneth Woods Portfolio Management Program