Four McDonough School of Business students represented Georgetown in its first appearance at the annual International Business Challenge held at the University of Texas this past weekend. Participants in the invitation-only competition hailed from 22 universities from the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
“The organizers of the competition invite premiere undergraduate business schools from all over the world, and there is a fairly strong international contingent,” coach Willis Emmons, a Georgetown MSB professor, said. “The last two years we were invited to attend, and so last year I observed the tournament. Based upon those observations, we had a competitive and extensive recruiting process that included an application and then an interview.”
In addition to overseeing recruitment and selection, Emmons coached the students for the competition. Hitesh Bharwani (MSB ’03), Ramy Hakim (MSB ’03), Anna Starikovsky (MSB ’04) and Bryan Steil (MSB ’03) represented Georgetown in the tournament.
The participants competed in a case style format and were assigned the same topic two days before the competition began. “Specifically, our case was about BP Amoco and how they should best use the natural gas reserves that they have in Trinidad. BP has very large gas reserves there, and our job was to present ways to best go about maximizing the value of these reserves, which they plan to begin using by 2008 or 2009 because the process of transporting natural gas without a pipeline is very complex,” Steil said. “Since there are no pipelines, BP has to liquefy the natural gas and then ship the liquid natural gas in ocean tankers and then `re-gassify’ the product, which is very expensive.”
“Teams had two days to come up with analysis of the business issues, which comprised many complex topics, from technological issues to shipping,” Emmons said. “The topic presented a challenge to all the teams, and I was impressed with Georgetown’s team, which I believe made very credible recommendations.”
After 56 hours of preparing their case, the colleges then paired off against other colleges, making recommendations for the company. Competitors had to compile all the information for the case and develop a five-minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of intense questioning by the judges.
Although Georgetown lost to Canada’s McGill University in the preliminary rounds, Emmons seemed optimistic about Georgetown’s future in the competition. “I thought our team made an extraordinary presentation. They were in a virtual tie with McGill, and though the Georgetown performance was quite strong, they were edged out by McGill,” Emmons said. “We learned a lot by competing this year, and the general response from the judges was that they were very impressed considering this was our first time in the competition. McGill has competed in all of the [IBC] competitions, and they have won the competition in the past.”
Emmons added, “We’d love to return next year. We are in great shape for next year, since we have one returning competitor and because we had three alternates on board this year. We will go through another recruiting process this year, and we are very much looking forward to returning and being contenders.”
“Georgetown hopes to return next year, and that really will depend on funding. The MSB gave us funding last year, and we’ll wait and see if the project will receive funding for next year,” Steil said.
Texas A&M University took first place in the competition.
