Freeman team takes top honors in Finance Case Competition

A team featuring Freeman MBA students Vivek Sharma, Jason Costa, Arnab Dasgupta and Anthony Elia won first place and a grand prize of $5,000 at the 15th annual Rolanette and Berdon Lawrence Finance Case Competition. This year’s competition took place at the Freeman School on April 1, 2011.

In addition to Tulane, the competition featured teams from Rice, Texas Christian University, University of South Carolina, University of Texas at Dallas, Vanderbilt and Washington University.

Vanderbilt earned second-place honors in the competition and a prize of $3,000, and University of Texas at Dallas won third place and $2,000.

Serving as judges this year were Joe Agular, partner with Johnson Rice & Co.; Chris Conoscenti, executive director of the Oil & Gas Investment Group with JP Morgan Securities; Casey Herman, assurance partner and U.S. assurance leader for the Utilities & Power Generation Sector at PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Curt Karges, managing director of Mid-Corporate Investing Banking with JP Morgan Chase.

“Since I have been at Tulane, our teams have won two competitions and placed in four competitions in the company of great teams from Emory, Rice, Texas and Vanderbilt,” said Rob Hansen, Francis Martin Chair in Business, who teaches the case-based course Valuation and Financing of Business Enterprises along with visiting assistant professor of finance Donald Monk. “Freeman finance students get a healthy exposure to valuation and financing in complex business settings and an emphasis on solving real-world problems as good finance communicators. Jason, Arnab, Anthony and Vivek represented Freeman as good as it can be done.”

The finance case competition began in 1997 and has been sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence since 1998. Berdon Lawrence (BBA ’64, MBA ’65) is chairman of Kirby Corp., a Houston-based operator of inland tank barges. He is a member of the Business School Council and a former member of the Board of Tulane.

To see more photos from the competition, including photos of all the winning teams, visit the Freeman School’s Flickr page.