MBAs show case competition strength
through victories

For the second time in three years, a team of four Broad School MBA students placed first at the annual Big Ten Case Competition. The team, comprised of first-year MBA students Corrie Brankatelli, Subhamoy Ganguly, Atul Suri and Jon Wood, won the event held recently at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. This year's trophy has been added to a Big Ten Case collection that includes first place distinctions received in 2002 and 1999.

"This was truly an outstanding performance on a very challenging case," said Visiting Assistant Professor of Management and team coach Frank Schultz. "They exhibited the outstanding analytical and oral communication skills that we expect of Broad MBAs."

The Broad team, along with fellow finalists from the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, were given 24 hours to prepare a presentation complete with PowerPoint slides. They then had to make recommendations to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW), an investment banking firm, on how best to structure an Intangible Asset-Backed Security offering for their auto racing client, Formula One.

"The finance focus played to the strengths of the Spartan team," Schultz said. "The students told me that their investments class was particularly helpful in the analysis of the case."

In addition, two first-year Broad MBA students were recently honored at the Simon Marketing Case Competition in Rochester, NY. Giulio Ambrosi and Neal Lao won first place and second place, respectively, while representing the Broad School on randomly-selected team composed of students from several top-ranked universities. Akilah Ellis, Nan Zhang and Nicole Ingram also participated in the competition.