Shruti Choudhary and Shalini Bhardwaj, from IIM Indore, have won the first IBS-BLoC Case Study Contest, presented by Hidesign.
The winning team will receive ₹25,000 in gift vouchers from the premium leather goods brand.
The case required students to don the hat of a mutual fund manager and vote on the proposed merger of the two companies. Backed by a well-argued analysis, Shruti and Shalini concluded that the merger would not be successful, and voted against it.
The contest received over 50 entries, quite high for a finance case study, and saw participation from a variety of B-schools, including IIM-A, IIM-B and ISB.
Market developments factored in
Prof D Satish, Associate Professor, IBS Hyderabad, who analysed all the entries, said the winners’ analysis put the case in context and also took into consideration the market developments.
“The case stood out from the rest, given its link to concepts and finance theory. The case analysis was built well on a model that analysed the possibility of success of the merger on a time-frame. Another important aspect was that the analysis of synergy was backed up by quantitative financial analysis, especially focusing on the cash-flows and trend in the cash equivalents, which are important from this merger point of view. Attempts made to calculate shareholder value-added are appreciated,” explains Satish.
Five teams are runners-up
Ashutosh Dubey and Himanshu Rawat of WeSchool, Mumbai, came second; the third place went to Abhijeet Prabhu and Mamta Gupta of Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai; a solo entry from Ankit Kumar of Goa Institute of Management stood fourth; in fifth spot were Prateek Gupta and Sumit Kumar, Great Lakes Institute of Management, while the team ranked sixth comprises K Samhita Reddy and Salvika Jajoria of IIM-Bangalore.
Watch out for the next case study to be posted on BLoC.