Seven top schools face off in Finance Case Competition

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Student teams from seven top schools vied for $15,000 in prizes on Friday (April 12) at the 17th annual Rolanette and Berdon Lawrence Finance Case Competition. The contest, an annual presentation of the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, took place in Goldring/Woldenberg Hall II on Tulane’s uptown campus.

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Berdon Lawrence, left, and Rolanette Lawrence, third from left, presented this year’s grand prize to a team from Rice University.

Each year, the competition tests the valuation and financial analysis skills of students in a challenging, time-sensitive environment. Students teams are tasked with analyzing a real-world finance case and developing recommendations for the company in question. The students must then present those recommendations to a distinguished panel of judges charged with selecting the top three presentations.

For the second straight year, a team representing Rice University took home first place honors and the competition’s grand prize of $7,000. The University of North Carolina won second place and a prize of $5,000, and the University of South Carolina earned this year’s third place award and a prize of $3,000.

In addition to those schools, other universities participating in this year’s competition included Tulane, University of Texas at Dallas, Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis.

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This year’s judges included, left to right, John Raymond, Casey Herman, Chris Conoscenti, and David Grzebinski.

Serving as this year’s judges were Chris Conoscenti (MBA/JD ’01), executive director of Energy Investment Banking at JP Morgan Securities; David Grzebinski (MBA ’93), executive vice president and chief financial officer of Kirby Corp.; Casey Herman (BSM ’86), partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers; and John Raymond (BSM ’92), CEO and managing partner of the Energy and Minerals Group.

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 the founder of Hollywood Marine and former chairman of Kirby Corp., an operator of inland tank barges headquartered in Houston. Kirby purchased Hollywood Marine in 1999. Lawrence is also 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.

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