Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently organized the 7th edition of its BCG Strategy Cup, one of the top business competitions in the Czech Republic.
Teams from Czech and Slovak universities participated in the competition. Their task: provide strategic advice on potential acquisitions for a global mining company. Finding an inventive and feasible solution demanded intensive brainstorming well into the night. Jiri Sykora and Jakub Cermak—both MAE students at CERGE-EI—and their teammate Andrea Sandorova (CVUT) had only five days at their disposal, and it was the first time they participated in such a challenging event.
Jiri provided us with insight into the team’s strategy: “We started by analyzing the individual commodities to determine which one would best fit into our company’s current portfolio. Based on this analysis, we formed a hypothesis about our potential recommendation and subsequently tried to validate it by company-level analysis. This was the most demanding part of the competition as we had to create detailed financial models with cash flows predictions for all three acquisition targets. Next, we identified the key value drivers of the acquisition, quantified synergies and performed a pro-forma analysis for the combined group. Based on this evidence, we supported our original hypothesis of acquiring the Colombian coal mine and recommended this to the company.”
Finally, the team had to present their recommendations to the BCG consultants and answer a series of demanding questions. Jiri and Jakub were extremely excited to find out they had won the competition, knowing that it will be a glowing achievement on their road to professional success.
The CERGE-EI community is very proud of them and their impressive results – CONGRATULATIONS!
