ISLA Lipana & Co., the Philippine member-firm of the PwC global network (PwC Philippines), is offering business students from universities and colleges nationwide a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience as the company launched the Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) Challenge 2017.
The competition offers students from universities and colleges nationwide an experience, a realistic simulation – the next best thing to an actual M&A engagement,” said Alexander Cabrera, chairman and senior partner of PwC Philippines during the launch last month.
The challenge is open to currently enrolled college students from business, accounting and engineering courses.
Cabrera added they want to help in the transformation of academe by integrating more real-life concepts into the curricula of local universities and colleges.
“In turn, we help prepare the students from the academic life into the actual world of business,” he said.
Jade Divinagracia, deals and corporate finance managing partner of PwC Philippines and lead partner for the event, said the students will have a hands-on experience as they go through the entire M&A deal cycle—from target identification, financial modeling and valuations, through to deal presentation.
The following are the process of the competition:
- Given a simulated M&A scenario, students will be tasked to help a prospective client fulfill their strategic needs by assessing the growth prospects of different industries. From there, they will identify which is the most suitable business for divestment.
- Judges will pose questions that will test the students’ understanding of various business concepts in accounting, tax, due diligence and corporate finance, as well as their proficiency in soft skills (i.e., presentations, public speaking and critical thinking).
- Teams must complete three rounds to win. Each round will require them to apply different technical and soft skills to solving problems that may occur when engaging a client during a corporate-finance engagement.
- A screening committee, composed of judges from PwC and the business community, will select the teams through elimination rounds. During the Final Presentations Day, finalists will take their cumulative knowledge from previous rounds and present their acquisition proposal to the judges.
Winning teams will be awarded with cash prizes and guaranteed internship opportunities with PwC Philippines’s Deals and Corporate Finance Department for 2018.
Students and faculty members will be invited to a series of webinars, called “The Dealmaker Seminar Series”, that will focus on valuation techniques, due diligence, public speaking and presentation skills, and accounting and tax considerations in business combinations. These should help them on concepts they will have to apply during the course of the competition.
The M&A Challenge will run from August until late-November. All students must be at least in their second year in college. All members of every team must be from the same university or college.
First place earns the winning team P100,000 plus P50,000 to the university, trophy and internship opportunity with PwC Philippines’s Deals and Corporate Finance Department in 2018; second place P50,000 plus a trophy; and third place, P25,000 and a trophy.