BYU Team Places at Mergers and Acquisitions Challenge

PROVO, Utah – Jan 26, 2009 – Mergers and acquisitions can be lucrative, as a team of MBA students from Brigham Young University learned when they won third place and $1,000 at the Second Annual Smith Mergers and Acquisitions Competition in Maryland.

The case competition, hosted by the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, gives teams one day to create a persuasive argument in favor of a merger and acquisition proposal — this year for Dell.

"There was something incredibly valuable in working under a compressed time frame and diving into the case that helped me understand how financial information is used to make business decisions," says Allison Clements, a first-year MBA student from Salt Lake City. "Having that perspective has helped me in my MBA classes as I study how management teams approach decisions."

The BYU team put together a proposal for Dell to acquire Computer Science Corporation and prepared a presentation to support their reasoning. This type of experience helps set students apart, especially as they prepare to enter a workforce filled with economic uncertainty.

"While economic events sweeping through Wall Street have altered the landscape for mergers and acquisitions, they have not changed the need for skilled graduates," says G. "Anand" Anandalingam, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. "This competition gives business students the opportunity to hone valuable and needed experience under tight deadline pressure that mirrors the conditions of the real world."

BYU's team included second-year MBA students Bryson Lord from Salt Lake City and Brigham Cochran from Houston; and first-year MBA students Spiro Savov from Bulgaria and Clements.

"Our team had complementary skill sets," says Grant McQueen, professor of finance and the team's faculty adviser. "Bryson and Brigham have excellent finance and quantitative skills, Spiro has a strong strategy and consulting background, and Allison has good marketing skills.  The team also had good chemistry, which comes from shared values."

Stephen Gaines, managing director of KPMG Corporate Finance and a final-round judge, says it's that type of collaboration and unity that sets the winning teams apart.

"The teams that came out on top were those that came together, had complementary skills and could show passion about what they believed, even if the judges were questioning it," Gaines says.

The University of Chicago placed first and won $5,000, and Purdue University was awarded $2,500 for placing second.

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.