UH undergraduate students received third place out of 35 teams Saturday in the first Oil and Gas Investment Banking Case Competition and Conference hosted by the Investment Banking Scholars Club of the C.T. Bauer College of Business.
Devin Wold, Patrick Mikkelsen and David Spilkin took third for at the first Oil and Gas Investment Banking Case Competition, which was hosted by the Investment Banking Scholars Club at the C.T. Bauer College of Business. | Manuella Libardi/The Daily Cougar
The ISBC is a highly selective club started last summer that requires applying students to go through an interviewing process and to have a minimum GPA of 3.5 to be considered, IBSC President Robert Dozortsev said. Of about 400 students who applied in the last year, only 38 were accepted, and the average member GPA is 3.7.
“UH is not a really strong investment banking school,” Dozortsev said. “The organization will allow for a level of networking and specialization that the University of Houston does not currently offer.”
Nine final teams of undergraduate and graduate students representing UH, Texas A&M University, Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas pitched to a group of judges at the event.
Jason Starnes, Chris Mersinger and Jissin Sanny from Rice and Marshall Robinson, Perry Reed and Durrel Hunter from TCU got first and second place respectively.
Dozortsev’s idea was to start a collaborative effort with Rice since it is a strong school that attracts a lot of investment banking recruiters.
“We were already doing a bi-weekly finance journal,” Dozortsev said. “My idea was, well, why don’t we get guys from Rice to write with us? So, we started the Bauer Jones Finance Journal, which is one of the cornerstones of the club along with this conference.”
Participating students were required to evaluate a hypothetical company, G&G, by looking at its financial statements, mostly assets, and then to compare the data to other companies’ through modules called comparables, IBSC member Adil Rajabali said. They also had to present future prospects and deliver values to shareholders of the fictional company, finance and accounting senior Patrick Mikkelsen said.
The event also featured keynote speakers executive professor Christopher Ross, who discussed value creation in a cylindrical industry, and SMU adjunct professor Jeffrey Noland, who discussed synergy, accretion-dilution and mergers and acquisitions. Lunch and dinner were provided to encourage networking between students, which Dozortsev believes is the strongest form of networking that can lead to future professional relationships.
“I think that IBSC is a great step forward in realizing the potential of UH and Bauer specifically,” Mikkelsen said. “Houston is the energy capital of the world, and a club like IBSC will really show the energy companies in Houston that Bauer has a great program and that they don’t have to go to UT, A&M or Tech to find great recruits.”
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