On Saturday 19 November, nine teams of UK-wide students progressed to the Grand Final of the UK Investment Banking Series M&A Challenge 2016, from more than 140 initial team submissions. This challenge is in its 6th year and is the largest and most recognised student competition on investment banking in the UK. The calibre of the Department’s Masters programme was unequalled, with three of the nine final teams comprising groups of current MSc Finance and MSc Finance & Private Equity students. The students went on to impress a team of investment banker judges from Evercore, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Our students eventually turned out top, winning both first and second place.
Co-organised by Business & Finance societies from UCL, LSE, Imperial, King’s College and Oxford Student Unions, participants were given an M&A case for which they had three weeks to produce and submit a buy-side M&A pitch book. These were assessed on the basis of soundness of proposal, accuracy of valuations and critical strategic analysis, as well as general creativity and organisation. All of the submissions were then judged with the top teams invited to the final round, which took place at King’s College London. This year saw the highest ever number of applications, making our students’ achievements even more outstanding.
The first prize winning team (left): Guillermo Martinez-Bernal, Christoph Picker, Hristian Nedyalkov, Felix Jiang and Karl-Martin Ahrend.
Second prize winners (right): Sylvia Chen, Djurre Hoogeveen, Royce Salim, Sjoerd Van-Dorp and Bryant Chang.
The third MSc Finance finalist group (middle): Darrell Lua, Korn Maneewannakul, Krystal Lim, Timothy Er and Boonyisa Boonthongrungtawee.