Kent State University’s College of Business Administration Students Compete in Case Competition

KENT, Ohio - March 20, 2015 - PRLog -- Three business students from Kent State University’s College of Business Administration competed in the Economist’s Investment Case Study Competition for undergraduate students in February.  Daniel Shuster, Shervon Preston and Evan Gallagher were selected to represent Kent State. They were presented with a financial business challenge based on a company in the investment research sector.

Shuster is a senior finance major who is involved in the Financial Management Association and a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity. He interned at JPMorgan Chase in the Finance Analyst Development program.

Preston is a junior accounting and finance major and is a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. She is the honors college senator for Undergraduate Student Government and the special events officer for Beta Alpha Psi.  Preston has had two internships, both at Pricewaterhouse Coopers with their Internal Firm Services and Risk Assurance.

Gallagher is a senior accounting major and president and co-founder of the Institute of Management Accountants Student Chapter. He is the current membership officer for the Beta Alpha Psi accounting fraternity and is a recent Beta Gamma Sigma honoree.  Evan has served as an intern at The Lincoln Company in Chicago, Illinois.  He plans on sitting for the CPA exam this summer and will join Deloitte's audit practice in the fall.

“The Economist Case Competition is a wonderful experience for our students,” said Steven Dennis, Ph.D., chair of the department of finance for the College of Business Administration and the Firestone Chair of Corporate Finance.  “We were asked to find a company with greater than a $1 billion market capitalization whose stock would be worthless within five years, which is a daunting task. We chose Caesars Entertainment Corp (ticker symbol: CZR).  The competition is a pressure-packed environment with only 15 days to find the company, analyze it, and write the report. Our team made a great case for the demise of Caesar’s.  We await the results of the competition, but regardless of how our team finishes, our students learned a great deal.”

Once the team received the “case challenge,” they drafted a proposal to solve the problem and had three weeks to create a 15 minute webinar that presents their findings. On Feb. 26, the group presented their results in an online, timed and recorded webinar and ended with answering questions in a separate recorded session.

The Economist will select three winners:

·         The first place team will be awarded $15,000, a trophy and three subscriptions to The Economist.

·         The second place winner will receive $5,000, a plaque and three subscriptions to The Economist.

·         The third place winner will receive $3,000 and will also receive a plaque and three subscriptions to The Economist.

The winners of the competition will be announced on May 20.

For more information on the competition, visit http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-case-studies/mba-case-competition-2014-15.

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Kent State University’s College of Business Administration is one of only 180 colleges or schools of business worldwide to achieve dual accreditation in both business and accounting from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International, the global accrediting body providing specialized accreditation at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. The College of Business Administration is home to 4,502 students, the second largest college of business in Ohio. The college boasts a satellite office at Kent State University’s Career Services Center dedicated to business students, and operates the Global Management Center, the Center for Information Systems and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation all propelling scholarly research, establishing innovative industry partnerships and providing outreach to Northeast Ohio and beyond.