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Andrew D. Sickinger, MBA '13

Fall Break: Part Deux, The IPO Challenge

Dec 20

Written by: Andrew Sickinger
12/20/2011 5:54 PM

(October 7-8th & October 28-29th)

Once we finished our recruiting trip to the City on Friday, many Investment Banking students made their way back to Ithaca for a quiet evening.

“Why quiet?” you ask. Isn’t this experience supposed to be College 2.0?!?!?

Well, it is, except when you have a Case Competition that starts early the next morning.

Case Competitions are opportunities, typically team-based, for MBA students to solve a real world problem using theories from the classroom. For example, the cases may be marketing centric, but have an economics component, or finance-focused but require concepts from accounting and strategy. They (typically) cover multiple disciplines and subject matters.

Here, at Johnson, we are extremely fortunate to have the ability to participate in three different types of case competitions: intra-school competitions, inter-school competitions held in Ithaca, and inter-school competitions hosted by other top schools.

That Saturday was for the latter. Johnson was invited to participate in the Chicago Booth IPO Challenge and compete amongst, and against, the top business schools in the world. Johnson fielded roughly 10 teams of 5 students in the global qualifying round.

At 10am on Saturday morning we were emailed the case. It involved an Aerospace & Defense company (real company, named was changed) that was considering going public. Our task, as advisors, was to value the company, review strategic alternatives, and then make our recommendation. All of this was to be complete and submitted by 10am on Sunday. Yep, 24 hours! Our team was great, and worked very well together. We even got about 2 hours of sleep.

Within 12 hours of submitting our recommendations, we received the news that THREE out of fifteen teams selected for the Final Round were from Johnson (our team included).

The Finals were held at Chicago Booth during the last weekend of October. It required the same tasks to be completed in the same amount of time, but for a new company. THREE Johnson teams, financially supported by our clubs and organizations, went head to head with teams from London Business School, Yale, both schools from Chicago, and Columbia.

We didn't win, but both the qualifying and the final rounds were a lot of fun, very educational, and an amazing experience, nonetheless. And “IPO Challenge Finalist” looks great on my resume!

But, of course, all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy, so after the presentations as quickly as we could, we left Chicago and arrived back in Ithaca at 11pm…just in time to catch the last few hours of the Johnson Halloween Party. :-)

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