trinity [week 3]: mbat

At 4am a bevy of buses rolled on to Park End Street. They were carrying Oxford MBAs, who despite their bruised and battered bodies, returned triumphantly from Paris, France. This year HEC celebrated its 20th annual MBAT sports competition. Over 13 MBA programs competed from across Europe, including many of our sworn enemies, such as LBS and Cambridge. Ever fond of traditions, Oxford has been competing in MBATs for several years now. The contest lasts from Thursday until Sunday during Trinity term, Week 3.

Every year the responsibility for organizing our entry into MBATs is coordinated by the "Social, Sports, and Welfare" Vice President along with their cadre of able and willing helpers. A GoogleDoc spreadsheet was sent out to the class to indicate sports preference as early as the start of Hilary term in January! I do not exaggerate when I say that the MBAT is the largest organizational effort undertaken at SBS all year.

I'd hate to admit this, but organizing the MBAT is more burdensome than any SAB, OBN, or SIG event or conference could ever be. Nonetheless, a total of 160 out of 238 Oxford MBAs (67%) participated, and they all paid the hefty £350 fee by the March 11th deadline. The fee would've undoubtedly been higher except that the SAB subsidized part of the cost. Thankfully, the fee covers just about everything: entrance fees, hotel accommodations, meals, parties, Oxford logo polo shirt, and a return bus ticket via Eurostar. MBATs have become so popular at Oxford that professors now reschedule classes and assignments to accommodate students.

This pales in comparison, however, to how highly regarded the MBAT is at HEC where it is a compulsory requirement to graduate. HEC hired coaches, and started training up to 6-months before the actual MBAT competition. So, despite their small size, HEC sends the third most number of students to compete - at 125 strong. Oxford sends the second most at 160, while LBS takes advantage of its larger class size and 24-month program by sending 225 students.

Oxford has finished in third place for the past three years (we did, however, more than halve the margin between second and third place this year from a 24 point difference to just 10 points). Typically, first and second place alternate between HEC and LBS although the latter had won five-years in-a-row until this year when HEC beat them.

As you can see from the chart there is a large gap between the top three competitors and the rest of the field. Oxford had double the number of points of the next closest opponent. Cambridge wasn't even close with their paltry 23 points. We did beat Cambridge for the gold medal in tug-of-war in less than 9-seconds, for which I am proud to have participated in. It was one of the four gold medals that Oxford won in total.

I also helped win a bronze medal in the final game against LBS for handball. Other sports that we should have finished better in include basketball and volleyball. Due to key players entering multiple events, we lost some games that we shouldn't have where there was a conflict in schedule. Unfortunately, this year's results fail to provide much predictive power for future years. Since most of the schools, including ours, send a unique group of MBAs to compete each year, you can never be sure which sports you will likely dominate in.

Although mechanical bull riding is not one of the qualifying MBAT sports...yet anyway...there are some rather obscure sports that we might consider focusing on to rack-up some quick points: babyfoot, chess, petanque, and tug-of-war. A little bit of practice in these sports can take you far. It's also worth noting that golf is unique since two teams are fielded. As a consequence, although LBS won gold in golf, our combined silver and bronze medals equaled their 5-point gain.

In conclusion, we've progressed Oxford further toward our goal of winning MBATs. It will be the responsibility of next year's class to achieve at least a second place finish (no pressure). But we should be used to winning. After all, we've been educating leaders (and winners) for over 800 years. In fact, they need to update the MBA brochures to reflect the fact that with the election of David Cameron (Brasenose), that now makes 26 total Prime Ministers to have come from Oxford!

trinity [week 2]: dr. ramin khadem

As Chairman of the Finance Oxford Business Club (Finance-OBN) - a rather esoteric way of simply saying "President of the Oxford Finance Club" - I schedule one guest speaker each term (in addition to all the other programs we run: Treks, CFA Review, Oxbridge exchange, Finance Faculty dinner, Stock Trading competition, etc). I cannot say this enough...that the strength of our club depends on the quality of its membership, and in each and every instance, our guest speakers have come from referrals from fellow MBAs. During Michaelmas term we hosted Usman Hayat, director of the CFA Institute's division on Islamic Finance. For Hilary term, we brought in Zeeshan Tayeb of Element Six (De Beers), who generously helped us organize a "Strategic Consulting Project" (SCP) for Trinity term.

For Trinity term, Emily (from my Michaelmas studygroup) arranged to have Dr. Ramin Khadem, Chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, give a speech entitled, "Reflections on the Root Causes of the Current Economic Crisis." Pretty typical fodder for an MBA audience following the "Great Recession of 2008-09," but what made this speech unique was that Dr. Khadem took an ethical approach to solving the root causes of economic excess.

As a member of the European Baha'i Business Forum, Dr. Khadem was uniquely qualified to speak on the role that moral and ethical values can play in business to enhance overall prosperity. Another twist on this presentation, is that Dr. Khadem has been involved in the commercialization of outer space for the past quarter-century, previously as the CFO of Inmarsat, a global satellite network company that was sold to private equity firms Apax Partners and Permira in 2005. Who better to combine business experience with the "big-picture" perspective?

Following on his success, Dr. Khadem now serves as Chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, where he aims to develop a "sustainable commercial transportation system to deliver payload services to the Moon in support of science." We've certainly come a long way since Frank Sinatra's 1964 rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon," recorded just 5-years before the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission. In the wake of Goldman Sach's Congressional testimony regarding charges of fraud last week, perhaps Dr. Khadem has the right idea, that when we search for ethical guidance we should look skywards where a more enlightened global perspective can be found.

trinity [week 1]: oxbridge games

...coming soon.