UP Visayas students win int’l biz management competition

By Nestor P. Burgos Jr.
Inquirer Visayas

ILOILO City, Philippines—The Philippines, represented by students of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas in Iloilo, topped an international business management competition, besting 16 other countries.

The team Scions of the UPV College of Management won the 2011 Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Global Business Challenge held in Chengdu, China, on July 23-24.

The GBC is an international competition among young business leaders, which gives them the opportunity to showcase their talent on a global platform, according to a CIMA statement.

The annual competition was first held in 2009 by CIMA, the world’s leading and largest professional body of management accountants, with 183,000 members and students in 168 countries.

The UPV team is composed of senior accountancy students Jerard Megg Cordero, Marra Francillan Cordero, Dominique Dabad and Ordisi Osonio. Prof. Arthur Barrido Jr. is the team’s adviser.

They bested nearly 9,000 international applicants to emerge as global champions at the GBC finals.

“This is the fruit of the team’s hard work. We prepared hard for six months for the national and global finals,” Barrido said.

The other competing countries included China, Malaysia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa and United Arab Emirates.

Case Crackers from Singapore came in second while Eva Consulting of Australia was third.

CIMA said the Scions “provided innovative and feasible solutions that balanced attention to detail with the appreciation of broad strategic issues.”

The Scions presented a business case that was assessed by a panel of experts from international business organizations including Barclays, Shell, L’Occitane en Provence, Tangs Department Store, TRW and CIMA.

Andrew Harding, CIMA managing director and head of this year’s judging panel, lauded the team Scions.

“I would like to commend team Scions on their outstanding performance and on becoming this year’s CIMA GBC champions … It has been exceptionally difficult to judge at times as the level of business skill in evidence has been striking. Team Scions really stood out for us because of their outstanding and solid performance,” Harding said in a statement.