AMES, Iowa - A team of Iowa State University MBA students won the fourth annual Big 12 MBA Case Competition last weekend. A record 11 of the Big 12 Conference schools competed in the competition, which was blind-judged by a panel of corporate executives at ISU's Gerdin Business Building.
Another team of finance students from ISU's College of Business also won this year's Krause Challenge, an investment challenge among Iowa State, The University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa and Drake University.
"These are great accomplishments for our students and great sources of pride for our college," said Labh Hira, dean of ISU's College of Business. "We've always known our MBA students are of the highest caliber, and winning the Big 12 Case Competition validates it. Likewise, it is very rewarding for our finance students to claim this year's Krause Challenge. Both show the value of an Iowa State business education in applying classroom learning to real-life business situations."
Big 12 MBA Case Competition
Iowa State's winning team from the Big 12 MBA Case Competition shows off the trophy. Team members include (from L to R): Srivani Harish, Gayathri Samarasingha, Scott Groh and Dan Hinz.
Iowa State team members Srivani Harish, Dan Hinz, Scott Groh and Gayathri Samarasingha had 24 hours to analyze an open-ended case involving the strategic management of an E-book reader, the Amazon Kindle, and present findings and recommendations to the panel of judges, who simulated Amazon.com's board of directors.
Professor of Finance Roger Stover and Assistant Professor of Management Andreas Schwab advised the Iowa State team, which beat second-place Baylor and third-place Texas A&M to win the competition.
"I consider 'eReading: Amazon's Kindle' to be a great Harvard Business case," Schwab said. "Books, magazines and journals lend themselves extremely well to digitalization -- consequently, the publishing industry is at the forefront when it comes to exploring the opportunities and challenges of the internet and modern communication devices. Thus, the Amazon Kindle case raises issues highly relevant for today's publishing industry, but also for many other industries and organizations."
Groh, a graduate student in business administration from Waukee, also won the best Q&A award for Division C.
"All the teams in the final round had fantastic ideas, but the one thing that set Iowa State apart was numbers," said Hinz, a business administration graduate student from Ames. "Scott Groh did an amazing job putting together some risk and financial analysis. By defending his numbers, Scott was able to convince the judges that our idea was not only strategically sound, but profitable as well."
Complete results are available at: http://www.business.iastate.edu/masters/big12casecompetition.
Krause Challenge
Iowa State's Krause Challenge coach Ioannis (Yianni) Floros
(far left) checks out the latest numbers with team members (L
to R) Mehmet Koksal, Timothy M.S. Su and Erik G.
Gustafson.
Kum & Go started the Krause Challenge in 1998 by donating $400,000 -- $100,000 to each of the four schools -- for finance students to invest in the stock market. Each year, finance classes and clubs from each university re-invest the funds and compete for the highest return. At least 10 percent of investments must be made in Iowa-based companies.
From Aug. 31 through March 31, the Iowa State team saw a 22.34 percent return on investment, amounting to $30,450. Drake saw the second-best return at 17.54 percent.
Up to 20 Iowa State students from the Security Analysis and Portfolio Management class (FIN 425) participate every semester. The students are coached on how to value equities, manage portfolios and analyze financial statements before implementing their plans to re-invest the Krause Challenge funds.
"This year's win comes as a result of our synchronized attempts to buy companies that are temporarily undervalued, exhibit comparative advantages in their industries and do not deteriorate the diversification of our portfolio," said Yianni Floros, an assistant professor of finance, who coaches the students. "We unloaded our portfolio by selling stocks operating in industries that are of higher risk, made our portfolio more manageable both for educational and trading purposes. It was fun coaching this dedicated group of students."
