Finance group wins competition
A group of finance students studying at Strathclyde Business School have come first in an international business competition run in Edinburgh, November 8-10.
Edinburgh Business Weekend is a business competition organised by the Heriot-Watt University Economics Society and aimed at penultimate year and final year students. The event brings highly-motivated 4-person student teams from some of the best universities together to compete in an energy investment challenge and network with some of the UK's most interesting employers.
The winning Strathclyde team were: Anca Bicuti (21) third year full time student, Finance and Economics; Pedro Cardoso (20) third year full time student, Finance and Economics; Lina Gasiulyte (22) third year full time student, Finance and Marketing; Karol Zajac (22) third year full time student, Finance and Management Science.
They competed against teams from another nine universities - University of Aberdeen, University of Cambridge, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, Warsaw School of Economics, University of Bath, Bristol University, and University of Manchester – to win the competition.
Anca explained, "Heriot-Watt Economics Society contacted the University of Strathclyde Investment Society - Pedro, Lina and I are part of the committee of the Investment Society US-IS and we decided to take a new challenge and enrol into the competition! We all knew each other from before because we started studying at Strathclyde at the same time and had classes and worked on projects together.
"After we decided to enrol we sent in our CVs and we got selected to proceed to the next stage. The competition is sponsored by BP and they created a case study for the competition. After we received the case study we had to prepare a presentation and decide whether BP should invest or not into a new location described in the case study.
"On the Saturday of the competition we had to present our suggestions and conclusions for the case study and also prepare - in a two hour period - another presentation for which we received the details during the competition day."
After the two presentations the judges from BP evaluated which university team performed the best. The competition day ended up with awards being given out before a formal dinner with the representatives from BP and Heriot-Watt University at Crowne Plaza Hotel. Fourth place was taken by Cambridge, third place was Heriot-Watt, second place was Bristol and first place was Strathclyde.
Anca added, "The experience has been amazing because we had tough competition - some of the teams participated in the same competition last year and with their experience of it, everybody expected that they were likely to win. We wanted to enjoy the experience and that is what we did and we were delighted when we found out we had won!
"Everybody in my team enjoyed the entire weekend. We learned so much about the oil industry, met amazing people from BP and also made new friends from other universities. Stuart Yelland- Global Graduate Resourcing Manager - Integrated Supply & Trading (IST) at BP, and one of the judges, encouraged us to apply for BP and told us that he enjoyed our presentation very much.
"We also enjoyed a guest lecture from Trevor Garlick, Regional President for BP's North Sea business, and Alistair Darling, principal of Heriot-Watt University. James Anthony Chalkley from BP affirmed that this is Europe's biggest Energy Investment competition.
"The organisation of the event was very good and the representatives of BP did a great job. I would strongly recommend other teams to join the competition in the future. The benefits of doing so are that you get to know more about the oil industry, more about BP, and we also had the opportunity to meet so many people from BP."
The winning team received £1000 and a trophy. Richard Grey, accounting and finance lecturer, said, "I'm pleased to see our students proactively competing against peers at other universities UK-wide in such a prestigious competition and delighted to see the students live up to their potential and win the competition outright - they are a credit to Strathclyde Business School."
