12 May 2008

BIG harvest for BIZ

THE PINNACLE: The champs of L’Oréal Brandstorm with Mdm Ho Geok Choo, MP for West Coast GRC (extreme left) and Mr Jean-Francois Couve, Managing Director, L’Oréal Singapore & Malaysia (extreme right). The BIZ team members (from left): Lydia Tay, Jenalyn Liu and Avril Tan.

NUS Business School students are certainly going places. For the second consecutive year, BIZ clinches the L’Oréal Brandstorm National Champions. Come June, they will be representing Singapore at the international marketing competition in Paris.

	MAKING AN IMPACT: NUS team representatives Neha Gupta and Gagan Deep receiving the cheque from Prof Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Policy at IIMPact Business Plan Challenge.

The winning team, The Pinnacle, beat seven other teams at the national finals (14 May). Another BIZ team was second runner-up. In addition, BIZ student Lai Wai Kit also won the Most Outstanding Presenter (Individual).

April alone, has brought in a good harvest of wins. Two NUS MBA teams were champions and 1st runner-up at the IIMPact Business Plan Challenge organised by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM). Students from premier business schools across Asia Pacific submitted their ideas for a business plan with focus on sustainable development. Besides strong competition from more than 75 teams from 14 other business schools, the NUS teams also battled against highly competent teams from IIM, which are India’s premier management and business schools.

GLOBAL WIN: (From left) Jeremiah Tay, Daniel Sim, Yang Sue Ann and Colin Yew with the top prize at the Global Business Case Competition.

Undergraduates are bringing home the glory too. One team wowed the judges with their thorough business proposal and well-covered strategies, as well as their excellent visual presentations at the Global Business Case Competition organised by the University of Washington Michael G Foster School of Business, USA. The team had to devise – within 48 hours -- a business proposal and strategy which involves expanding the reach of Starbucks’ music to other continents outside of the US.

On home ground, another team emerged 2nd runner up at the inaugural SGX Business Case Competition held in April where participants played the role of consultants and prepared detailed business proposals to enhance domestic and regional retail participation in securities and derivatives markets operated by Singapore Exchange.

Earlier in March, another undergraduate team had also emerged 1st runner up at the McGill Management International Case Competition where participants researched and presented a business strategy within 24 hours for a non-commercial service in Africa.