A team of MBA students from Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management took second place this winter in the University of Texas at Austin National Real Estate Challenge, a prestigious MBA case competition.
The team members were second-year MBA students Peter Kleinberg, Gavin McDowell, Johnny Shoaf and Stephen Songy, and first-years Justin Albright and Tim Kilroy. A team from the University of California at Berkeley took first place.
The fictional case was inspired by an actual case: a Goldman Sachs real estate fund’s $400 million acquisition and rehabilitation of the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel and Casino. “We were given three days to work on the case and then submitted our analysis and recommendations,” Songy says. “Then we traveled to Austin to present to a panel of judges comprised of experienced practitioners in the field of real estate, including the key individuals who led the actual deal for Goldman Sachs.”
The Vanderbilt team advanced to the finals for the second time in two years, and won $3,000 for the second place finish. “Given the field of competition, we can be very proud of our students,” says Jacob Sagi, Vanderbilt Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Management.