BETA, the Finance and Investments club of IIM Ahmedabad, is all set to stage the Grande finale of EXCHEQUER 2011 – a national level financial services competition organized in association with UBS, Axis Bank and CIIE. Through EXCHEQUER, BETA aims to open up a platform, in which teams comprising the best students from India’s best B-Schools compete to be crowned ‘The Wizards of Finance in India’.
This year, the event is taken a notch higher. As part of the Axis Ahead – Campus Connect programme the President of Corporate Banking, Axis Bank - Nilesh Shah himself will be coming down to campus to judge the event. Mr. Shah along with Mr. Sandip Bansal, Associate Director at UBS and Mr. Soumitra Sharma from the Investment team at IDG Ventures will be testing the participants in their knowledge and skill. Nilesh Shah will also spend time with students at IIM Ahmedabad, sharing insights on the future of the markets in light of the growing global financial crisis. Mr. Sharma will also be holding a discussion on the opportunities presented in the field Venture Capital in India.
EXCHEQUER shall test its participants through competitions that shall simulate real-world conditions as closely as possible across all major financial disciplines. Top 9 teams out of teams from the 25 top B-Schools in India that were invited to participate in the preliminary round will contest in the Grand finale.
The event is being held over the period of Sept-Oct over two rounds. The first stage was an online elimination round from which the top 9 teams graduated to the second round to be held at the IIMA campus on October.The preliminary round began on the 9th of September and went on in phases till the 17th of September with the results for the first round declared on 23rd September.
Each stage tests the teams on their real-world skills in reading, understanding and taking positions in the four sectors namely, capital markets, investment banking, private equity & venture capital and financial strategy.
The four sub-events for each of these sectors, Arbitrage (Capital Markets), DealMaker (Investment Banking), Leverage (PE/VC) and White Knight (Financial Strategy) will present problems tempered with real world constraints to the competing teams such that their knowledge and skills are tested to the extreme. The details of the four sub-events are as follows:
The Investment Banking event, DealMaker, is designed to put the participants in the banker’s shoes and execute the process of deal making from origination till pitching to potential investors.
Arbitrage (Capital Markets) aims to give participants the opportunity to compete against each other in a simulated market, testing their capital markets fundamentals.
The Private Equity event, Leverage, will give participants an opportunity to play the role of a private equity firm using a simulated deal execution from term sheet to funding
White Knight, the Strategic Finance event, will require the participants to formulate a financial plan for the future strategic initiatives for a retail bank/microfinance institution.
The Grand Finale shall take place at the IIMA campus from the 7th to 9th of October.