Success at the Rotterdam School of Management European Private Equity Case Competition

I was a member of London Business School’s winning team at the European Private Equity Case Competition hosted by the Rotterdam School of Management on October 22. The event was fantastic – it brought out the best in the eight competing teams and provided a great learning opportunity to everyone involved. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were extremely proud to take the trophy back to London.

As you’d expect from LBS, our team was a diverse mix of professional and national backgrounds – an Italian investment banker (Matteo Masi), an American hedge fund analyst (Chris Steinbaugh), an Italian consultant (Matteo Luoni) and an Irish/American PE associate (me). Our road to Rotterdam started a month earlier, when we won an internal competition organized by the LBS Private Equity and Venture Capital Club (the judging panel included Dunedin Capital Partners’ Jim Strang, Coller Institute Chairman Eli Talmor and Executive Director Hans Holmen).

The case for the competition arrived a week before we were due in Rotterdam. Intriguingly, the organizers structured the case as an overview of the German ice cream manufacturing industry, laying out five different potential targets to analyze. This broad case meant that there were multiple investment strategies on the table.

The preparation week flew by as we balanced our regular class workload with the hours of intense industry research, company analysis and financial modeling necessary to form our investment thesis. We settled on an industry roll-up as the best strategy and focused hard on communicating our rationale and evaluating the key investment risks – we were still making tweaks to our presentation as we flew to Rotterdam on Thursday evening.

The competition itself was set up in two rounds. In the first round, we faced off against the teams from INSEAD, ESADE and IESE for a single spot in the final. The eight judges boasted a range of experience in private equity and related advisory services. Our 20-minute presentation went smoothly, and we felt we handled the 10-minute Q&A session well. We knew that the other schools would be equally well prepared, so we weren’t surprised when the judges announced that the competition in our group had been extremely close. We were able to breathe a sigh of relief when they revealed that we’d made it through to the final, where we’d face Hong Kong-UST.

The final round was just as nerve-racking. We were given a slightly-expanded 25-minute timeslot for our presentation, but in this round the judges were allotted up to 30 minutes for Q&A. After our presentation, they relentlessly grilled us on the industry and financial assumptions underpinning our strategy. By the time it was over we were mentally exhausted, but relieved that we’d been able to defend our rationale and analysis relatively well. The judges took their time deliberating, and again commented on how close the decision between the two finalist teams had been. When they announced us as the winner, we were elated.

The announcement was followed by a drinks reception and dinner hosted by RSM in Rotterdam. We were able to thank the judges and received some insightful feedback on the strengths and weaknesses in our presentation – a great opportunity to learn from industry practitioners. We also got to know the other teams a bit better and traded war stories from our preparation and presentations. It was an excellent cap to the day and further enhanced the great overall experience.

James O'Gara, MBA 2012