Marriott School Holds Its First Private Equity Case Competition

The PECC first place team. From left to right: Craig Cannon, Ashton Grewal, Dallen Moore, Jeffrey Chambers.

PROVO, Utah — Jul 18, 2008 — More than 100 Brigham Young University students teamed up with private equity and investment banking professionals at the first-ever BYU Private Equity Case Competition, giving students the opportunity to find out what it takes to work in the private equity industry.

Students combined in teams of two to four members to develop a plan to buy an underperforming business and make it more profitable before re-selling it. Professionals from around the world served as trainers, mentors, and judges to help the teams make their leveraged buyout proposals.

“Going through the exercise of selecting a leveraged buyout target, performing financial analyses, structuring a transaction, and supporting an investment thesis through company and industry research has given the students a real flavor of the work and thought process involved in the private equity industry,” says David Penner, an analyst at Sorenson Capital and a PECC mentor.

Teams were given three weeks to choose a company and construct summaries of their proposition. Eleven finalists were then given mentors to help them prepare in-depth presentations for a panel of judges.

“Being trained by these professionals was incredible because it took private equity out of an academic setting and into real life,” says James Pierce, one of the lead organizers for the PECC and a recent Marriott School finance graduate. “We took people who didn’t know anything about private equity and trained them through a private equity boot camp, all the way to where they could put together a presentation that could go to a real private equity company.”

The top three teams received cash prizes donated by the Peery Institute of Financial Services.

The $1,000 first place prize went to the Family Dollar team, consisting of Craig Cannon, a recent graduate in accounting from Phoenix; Jeff Chambers, a recent graduate in management from Portland, Ore.; Ashton Grewal, a senior economics major from Burlingame, Calif.; and Dallen Moore, a senior management major from Spring, Texas.

The $500 second place prize went to the Wellcare Health team, consisting of Scott Terry, a junior pre-management major from Kingman, Texas; Chris Lee, a senior management major from Orem, Utah; and Aaron Purcell, a senior management major from Eagle, Idaho.

The $250 third place prize went to the Limited Brands team, consisting of Peter Harris, a senior management major from Syracuse, N.Y.; Megan Nelson, a senior economics major from Danville, Calif.; Nathaniel Woo, a junior economics major from Singapore; and Enoch Yeung, a senior mathematics major from Durham, N.C.

Bryan Porter of Goldman Sachs came up with the idea to hold the PECC at BYU and served as a team mentor. He says the main goals were to get students interested and involved in private equity and to help them get connections to private equity and investment banking companies. “Overall it was very successful,” he says. “I was very impressed with the students who participated.”

PECC participants agree that the competition was an invaluable learning experience. “It required a lot of work and more time than I had imagined, but it was worth it,” Grewal says. “This was an extremely useful exercise because it is exactly what many bankers do.”

Pierce says they plan to hold the PECC on an annual basis. He also hopes they will be able to expand in the next few years to allow many more students to receive training in private equity.

“Private equity is one of the hardest businesses to get into, but it is also one of the most rewarding,” he says. “The potential to spread out is really huge. This could be the annual competition in private equity, including multiple schools across the United States.”

The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, public management, information systems and entrepreneurship. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.