hilary [trek]: part 1, new york

Certainly one of the highlights of the Oxford MBA is the global Treks that take place in April between Hilary and Trinity terms. This year the Oxford SBS Alumni Relations Office recognized ten different Treks. They included China (Hong Kong & Shanghai), Geneva, Germany, India, Japan, Middle East, New York/Boston, Nigeria/Ghana, Silicon Valley, and Spain. Although students organize these Treks, they are supported by both the Alumni Office and the Careers Office. In fact, the New York/Boston Trek that I organized was of such strategic importance that both the Careers director and the Alumni director attended. Well, technically, the Alumni director's flight was cancelled due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland, but still...these Treks are big events!

Any Oxford MBAs interested in "pitching" a Trek next year will typically face a deadline on the second-to-last Friday in January (i.e. Friday, January 22, 2010). During the following week, students actually pitch their Trek ideas with the winners being announced the following Monday (i.e. Monday, February 1, 2010). By this point, you should have already identified a team to help you, a list of students who have displayed interest in attending the Trek, and a list of companies that you are targeting.

Your Trek team will be given 30-minutes to pitch the proposal to a committee consisting of at least the Alumni and Careers directors. At this point, the New York/Boston Trek had "indications of interest" by email from 50 MBA students, of which, ultimately 12 attended the Trek. We had also compiled a 5 slide PowerPoint deck, which identified the dates of the Trek, as well as the flight, hotel, and estimated budget. Of the 15 companies that we had originally identified, we wound up seeing 10 of them, which is a pretty strong success rate. This year all 10 Treks were approved, and collectively over 150 of the 243 students in the 2009/10 class visited 100 companies. Hopefully, next year will be as strong - if not stronger!

Most people flew-in to New York (JFK airport) the weekend before our Trek started. Many people stayed with friends or family to save money. It appears that everyone knows someone in NYC! Those who stayed in a hotel chose "The Pod Hotel" in midtown Manhattan for about $75 each per/night (assumes sharing a room). You can book online, or call them at (212) 355-0300 (info@thepodhotel.com). I think that the best deal they offer is an en-suite room with two twin-sized beds, which for some reason can only be booked over the telephone, not over the Internet. We just missed our Columbia MBA counterparts this trip, but ideally next year we'll able to organize a night-out, or a brunch, to share our "case-study" war-stories.

We tried to cluster our company visits together. For example, on Monday we stayed downtown and visited Citigroup at 388 Greenwich Street, and then Deutsche Bank at 60 Wall Street. The next two days were spent largely in midtown. On Tuesday we visited CBRichardEllis, Credit Suisse, and Barclays Capital. We finished in New York on Wednesday by seeing Sanford Bernstein, SecondMarket, and Pfizer. Similarly, next year's Trekkers should consider visiting no more than three companies each day.

It would be unfair to choose favorites, but suffice to say that ALL of ours hosts had put a considerable amount of time and effort into our visit, and we could not be more grateful. Learning about how the commercial real estate market in New York is structured, and how absorption rates may presage an economic turnaround was absolutely mind-blowing. Other companies were saddled with the Herculean task of finding buyers for hundreds of billions worth of assets. One company shared with us that they knew exactly where every oil tanker in the world was at anyone given point in time by cross-referencing insurance records with maritime weather reporting. Bright people!

Still others spoke to us about the intersection of finance and social welfare through microfinance. Meanwhile a bunch of young and talented hot-shots are fastidiously creating new markets around the world for trading illiquid assets. I wonder if I could buy a PPM (private placement memorandum) in their company through their own trading architecture - that would be interesting!? Finally, the last company on our New York trek brought out an impressive line of managers who deftly answered our questions regarding the effect of Obamacare on the healthcare industry, and how pharma companies compete for market share in emerging markets that are already saturated with generic drugs.

Needless to say, this New York Trek was a real treat for all of us. We are eternally grateful to our kind and generous hosts. We trust that they were sufficiently impressed with us, too, so that they will be willing to meet with next year's Oxford MBA class!

hilary [trek]: part 2, boston

After spending the first three days of the week in Manhattan, we shuttled off to Penn Station, bags in tow, and fresh from our afternoon meeting with Pfizer, to catch our Amtrak train to Boston. I suggest next year's Trekkers to order train tickets in advance, when they can be bought for as little as $48 one-way, as the price can double just a few days before departure. The more adventurous "budget traveller" can take the Fung Wah Bus out of Chinatown for $15 one-way - there is no cheaper way to travel from New York to Boston. In either case, you will want to get off at the Boston South Station (BOS) near the financial district.

Our Career Director really earned his keep during this 4 1/2 hour train ride as he indulged our many questions regarding career advice. We checked-in to the Holiday Inn at Beacon Hill. I recommend this hotel to next year's Trekkers, because it's conveniently located near both the financial district, and the MBTA Red Line, which can get get you to Cambridge to visit Harvard and MIT within a 5-minute subway ride. We booked the hotel through Priceline.com for $95 per/night for a twin room, which meant that when sharing the bill, it cost us less than $50 per/night each. The hotel is located at 5 Blossom Street, and you can reach them by calling (617) 742-7630.

Thursday was our first full-day in Boston. We were scheduled to visit our MBA counterparts, and some Oxford alumni, at the Harvard Business School. As President of the Oxford Finance Club, I reached out to my counterparts at HBS, Co-Presidents Melvin and Larry, who were kind enough to host us during our trip to Cambridge. In return, we offered to host them during their London Trek in late November (during the Thanksgiving holiday). It was a great opportunity to compare notes on what activities our respective finance clubs had planned for the year. Melvin met us outside the Baker Library at 10am, and walked us over to attend our first HBS class. Professor Matthew Weinzierl kindly introduced himself to us. A wunderkind who focuses on taxation issues, the Professor Weinzierl is a hands-down student favorite who teaches the BGIE (Business, Government and the International Economy) required class to first year students.

After class we ate on campus at the Spangler Food Court. Then, we spent the rest of the day discovering Harvard University. I walked down Oxford Street, and found my way to the Harvard Law School where I sat for a while reading under the warm sun, taking everything in - it had been a busy Trek so far! Later in the evening, we met with some Oxford alumni, who were now studying at HBS and HLS, and enjoyed a nice dinner, courtesy of Oxford Alumni, at a highly-recommended restaurant, called "Upstairs on the Square."

Following a nice day of rest-and-relaxation, we visited the last two companies of our Trek on Friday. We started the day at the international headquarters for Fidelity Investments at 245 Summer Street in Boston. Founded in 1946, Fidelity grossed more than $12 billion in sales last year. The nation's largest private mutual fund company, Fidelity rose to prominence when famed mutual fund manager, Peter Lynch, averaged a 29% annual return during his tenure between 1977 and 1990. With over $20 billion in assets, the Magellan fund has now been eclipsed by the Fidelity "Contrafund," which has nearly $60 billion in assets. Each year, Fidelity brings in roughly twice the total number of assets of Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Citi Smith Barney combined. In addition to its retail activities, Fidelity also boasts a very strong asset management business. Our host Alison invited Matt from institutional research to talk with us about the exciting things that FRM is doing. Thank you both very much!

Later in the afternoon, we walked down the block to visit State Street Corp at 1 Lincoln Street. Our host Lauren organized a tour de force. Over the course of two hours, we toured the trading floor, met with the head of Talent Acquisition (Richard), the recruiter for SSgA-Global Advisors (Erin), and the recruiter for SSGM-Global Markets (Amy). They were incredibly generous with their time. The head of trading also stopped by to take us through a day-in-the-life of a new hire in the "professional development program (PDP)." Like many other companies, State Street is looking to expand its footprint, and its "global rotational program (GRP)" with SSgA sounds very promising, yet extremely competitive. Thank you for making it a spectacular visit!

Finally, I would once again like to thank Harvard University, Fidelity Investments, and State Street for making our New York/Boston Trek an unmitigated success. I hope that you were as impressed with us, as we were with you. I very much look forward to helping next year's MBA class visit again, and to include other Boston financial firms, such as Putnam Investments and MFS. Now it's back to Oxford to start Trinity term (ends July 3rd), provided this Icelandic volcanic eruption stops already!

hilary [trek]: press release, launch

For the past two-months I've been organizing a cross-Atlantic Trek to New York. Everything is now ready to go! We're visiting ten blue-chip companies in New York and Boston, and twelve MBAs are participating. While we're here, we're also attending alumni events in both New York and Boston. And we're going to meet our fellow MBAs at Columbia and Harvard. It should be great fun, and I'm going to blog about all of it! Let's start with the press release recently issued by the Oxford B-school Press Office:


Oxford Comes to Wall Street
MBAs on business trek to New York and Boston

9 – 18 April 2010

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

A team of MBA students from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford will be visiting the USA on a business trek organised by the School’s student network for Finance. The team will be visiting New York and Boston to meet with key companies from the financial sector in order to gain an insight into how business in the sector operates.

With participants from Europe, North and South America, and Asia the trek is an opportunity for students to increase their understanding of the financial markets and business developments in the US, to see firsthand how the financial sector is recovering, and to network with Oxford alumni and corporate contacts. The students also plan to meet with MBA candidates for the incoming class.

One of the organising students Justin Belkin said: ‘‘The MBA class at Saïd is very diverse with participants from around 50 countries worldwide and from a wide variety of different sectors. The School has an excellent finance faculty and many of the class, keen to pursue a career in that sector, expressed an interest in getting firsthand experience of American culture and trade so I decided to organise a trek focusing on different organisations on Wall Street and beyond. We could not have chosen a better time to visit. As the economy recovers, more employers are looking to recruit from the top business schools, and Oxford is a natural choice. This will be a good opportunity to highlight the USA as an attractive destination for a fulfilling post-MBA career.”

The 15 students undertaking the trek are all keen to forge strong connections and to learn from the companies they will meet on their visit including: Barclays Capital, CB Richard Ellis, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, Pfizer, Sanford Bernstein, SecondMarket, and State Street.

The Oxford students will also meet with fellow MBAs from both Columbia and Harvard Universities to network and build transatlantic relationships.

While the team is confident that they will hear practical wisdom from these interactions, they hope to reciprocate by engaging in meaningful dialogue and offering consultancy advice on specific opportunities and challenges for some of the organisation’s they visit.

Derek Walker, Head of Careers at Saïd commented: ‘It is good to see the strong interest among our students in working in the finance sector in the USA, and clearly the country presents good opportunities. The students have set up a series of valuable meetings and will also be working closely with our alumni there to maximise their opportunities. The visit is a good way for companies to meet MBA students who are highly motivated to work in the US, are geographically mobile, and who have a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, business specialisms and sector experience. We look forward to a successful visit.’