Freeman team earns top prize in energy case competition

A team of undergraduate students from the A. B. Freeman School of Business beat out peers from two other Louisiana universities to earn top honors in the first annual ACG Energy Case Competition.

Based on the ACG Cup, the Association for Corporate Growth’s annual case competition for MBA students, the ACG Energy Case Competition was created to provide undergraduate students at local universities with real-world experience in the area of mergers and acquisitions, investment banking, and financial advisory services relating to the energy industry. The final round of the competition, which was hosted by ACG Louisiana with sponsorship support from Harvey Gulf, EY and McGlinchey Stafford, took place at the Freeman School on Oct. 4.

Five schools — Tulane, Xavier University, Louisiana State University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Southeastern Louisiana University— took part in a first round of intraschool competitions. Three of those schools — Tulane, ULL and Southeastern — sent teams to compete in the final round.

“The competition drew over 100 students from across Louisiana,” said Nene Glenn Gianfala (BSM ’07), who chaired the competition for ACG Louisiana. “We were thrilled with the participation and feedback that we received from the universities.”

The competition centered on a case involving a fictional publicly traded oilfield service company that was experiencing difficulties with one of its operating divisions. In the first round, students were asked to value the company and its under-performing division and consider a sale of the unit. In the final round, teams were presented with new information about the case and asked to prepare a 30-minute presentation with revised analysis.

In the end, judges awarded the competition’s first-place prize to Freeman students Ben Meisel, Joe Rosenfield, Tom Vaughan and Phil Martindale. For winning the competition, the team members, who are each currently enrolled in adjunct lecturer Les Alexander's Energy Investment Banking course at the Freeman School, received a cash prize of $2,000 and four Young ACG memberships.  The team from Southeastern earned second place and a $2,000 prize, and the team from ULL won third place and $500.

“All the teams that competed in the final round did a fabulous job,” said Gianfala. “They were definitely the crème de la crème of their respective universities.”