Auburn’s Financial Management Association team took second place out of 77 teams at the prestigious Duff & Phelps YOUniversity Deal Challenge in New York City on Feb. 1. The achievement won $6,000 in scholarships for the five students composing the team and an opportunity to present their solution to Duff & Phelps experts and nationally recognized professors at the Duff & Phelps headquarters in New York.
“This was a huge honor and excellent learning opportunity,” said Bailey Sullivan, junior majoring in industrial systems engineering and minoring in finance. “Our team worked hard to craft the presentation throughout the fall semester and it was exciting to see those efforts pay off.”
The team’s achievement strengthens the professional reputation of Auburn’s FMA program on a national level as well as a competitive university in the financial services industry.
“Most importantly this goes to show that students from Auburn - if equipped with the proper resources such as those that FMA provides - can compete with the best schools in the nation,” said Jordan Carr, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in finance.
Other team members included Jimmy Brewster, a sophomore majoring in finance; Ty Lamar, a junior majoring in finance; and Ben Yost, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering.
The Duff & Phelps YOUniversity Deal Challenge encourages teams from all over the world to apply technical reasoning and critical thinking through key stages of the deal-making process to prepare a set of multi-million-dollar recommendations for judges.
This year, teams acted as investment banking consultants with a long list of objectives to valuate a newspaper publishing company using three different methods, determine whether a financial or strategic buyer would be the most advantageous option might be the best buyer and calculate total damages associated with a fictional policy that Google and Facebook would impose.
After researching different industry options, the team argued for a strategic buyer that would integrate the client’s operations into the buyer’s existing network.
“Ultimately, I think this team was interested in the material and was willing to put in the work necessary to turn in a quality product,” Carr said. “Each team member spent at least 90 or 100 hours working on this – most others teams probably weren’t that diligent.”
That diligence helps distinguish students like Carr, Sullivan, Brewster, Lamar and Yost amongst their peers and within their job field, particularly in their efforts to further themselves without any specific preparatory classes.
“To be able to do this with almost no undergraduate academic classes that support these topics also goes to show that these students are willing to put in a lot of work on their own to get where they want,” Carr said. “It is a lot of time to do a project like this. It says that you are willing to go above and beyond.”
The project’s rigor resembles that of which the students will face in real-world investment banking situations and gives them a critical edge when looking for future employment.
“It gives students a great idea of what to expect from the industry,” Carr said. “In addition, these students can now use this competition as a point of discussion in interviews. Half of the team has already used this in interviews and landed offers.”
Carr will start full-time in July with Moelis & Company in New York City working in investment banking. Sullivan attained an investment banking internship with Wells Fargo Securities this summer in New York City. And Brewster and Lamar will also work as investment banking interns this summer.
The team’s diligence ultimately landed them as finalists with the University of Illinois and Brigham Young University, with Brigham Young pulling ahead as the winner.
“We were competing to win first, which is why 2nd place came as a slight disappointment,” Carr said. “Having said that, the team for this upcoming year will be shooting for 1st again and hopefully they can pull it off.”
Despite not placing first, the team’s achievement still displays the successful results and high return on in investment in the FMA.
“The stakeholders in FMA have spent a lot of time building it to what it is and seeing these results is encouraging,” Carr said. “In only four years, the organization has gone from nothing to being a finalist in international competitions.”
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