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.
Every year, Oxford MBAs have three options during the summer to satisfy their academic requirements: Strategic Consulting Project (SCP), elective courses, or Master's thesis (10,000 words). Next year, SBS will start counting internships for credit for the first time, too. Traditionally, most students opt for the SCP. The b-school has staff solely dedicated for sourcing, and administering SCPs for you. They're very helpful, and approachable. This year there were approximately 60 SCPs to bid for, some with big names such as Citigroup or De Beers, and some with decent packages, such as a salary, or free travel and accommodation. MBAs compete as teams of four for these more desirable SCPs. You can, of course, just circumvent the entire process by "sourcing" a SCP all on your own, which is what I did.
Back in April, I organized a student-led Trek to New York and Boston. During one of the company visits, with SecondMarket, I could sense that they had a lot of projects that they wanted to follow-through on, but since they were still relatively new and short-staffed they just didn't have the man-power they needed. So, during the Q&A portion of the presentation, I asked our host if he was interested in having a small group of Oxford MBAs come back during the summer to help. And happily, he agreed. I remember Donald Trump once writing, "It never hurts to ask, because the worse that can happen is that they say no." 
Since April, I've been in contact with the New York office to iron-out the details. I had to draft a proposal for SBS to receive approval for academic credit, and I had to find a team of four MBAs in total. This was all difficult, considering that during this time I was still running the Finance Club, and taking 6 elective course, such as Corporate Valuation, Entrepreneurial Finance, and Financial Risk Management. Now that all the administrative work is out of the way, though, I thought that it would be a great time for the team to bond. And what better way to bond, then to spend a sunny weekend afternoon in Trinity term punting on the Cherwill with Pimms? Good friends, and good times. We learned a lot about each other, and spent time discussing the fast-approaching SCP with SecondMarket. I'm very proud of our team, too. After I tell people who's on our team, they usually raise an eyebrow, and simply say "Wow. That's a good team." Both Platt and myself were nominated for the "John Nash: MBA who can crunch numbers like kit kat bars" award, so that's when you know you've got the cream of the crop, or at least a tasty candy bar.
