Student Team Wins Finance Competition

A team from the Owen School captured first place and the grand prize of $5,000 on March 19 in the Rolanette and Berdon Lawrence Finance Case Competition at Tulane’s Freeman School of Business. This is the third time a team from Vanderbilt has won the competition during the past five years.

Team members were second-year MBA students Dan Bryant and Matthew Clemson and first-years Scott O’Connell and Mark McDonald. They competed with teams from Emory, the University of Texas, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rice, Washington University at St. Louis, Tulane and the University of South Carolina. Emory and Texas placed second and third, respectively.

The case focused on the leveraged buyout of Hertz from Ford Motor Co. by a consortium of three private equity firms. The competitors were given five hours to read the case and prepare a PowerPoint presentation to a panel of four judges who work in investment banking and private equity.