Wharton School of Business Wins Sixth Annual Corporate Restructuring Competition

Wharton School of Business Wins Sixth Annual Corporate Restructuring Competition

Contact: John Hartgen
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WHARTON SCHOOL OF BUSINESS WINS SIXTH ANNUAL CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING COMPETITION

November 10, 2009, Alexandria, Va. — A team from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business won the Bettina M. Whyte Trophy at the Sixth Annual ABI Corporate Restructuring Competition, held Nov. 6 at Northwestern University in Chicago. The second-year MBA student winners also shared a $6,000 cash prize. Students from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management won the second-place award of $3,500, with the University of Illinois College of Business receiving the $2,500 prize for third place.

The competition, which is co-sponsored by ABI and the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management, provided 12 of the nation’s top MBA programs with a unique opportunity to learn by solving a real-world restructuring case problem. The students had a week to “solve” the problem and prepare comprehensive presentations showing their operational and financial plans before panels of judges representing a mock board of directors and bondholders, with a final round before mock first and second lienholders.

Past winners of the Corporate Restructuring Competition include the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management (January 2007 and November 2008), New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business and the Stanford Graduate Business School. The Wharton School won the Fourth Annual Corporate Restructuring Competition in November 2007. Other schools in this year’s competition in addition to the finalists and past years’ winners included the Columbia Business School, Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, Purdue University Krannert School of Management, University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Management, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Prof. Tim Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management served as the lead faculty advisor to the competition.

In addition to the case presentations, the competition featured an opening night dinner keynoted by American Enterprise Institute Scholar Peter J. Wallison, AEI’s Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies. An awards luncheon also followed the final round of the competition.

ABI acknowledges the commitment of Houlihan Lokey to the competition, which prepared the case problem. ABI would also like to thank the major sponsors of this year’s competition, including AlixPartners LLP, Bridge Associates LLC, CRG Partners Group LLC and William Blair and Company. The sponsor of the reception for the competition was Garden City Group, Inc.

To find out more about the Corporate Restructuring Competition, please visit www.abiworld.org/crc.

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ABI is the largest multi-disciplinary, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research and education on matters related to insolvency. ABI was founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues. The ABI membership includes more than 12,300 attorneys, accountants, bankers, judges, professors, lenders, turnaround specialists and other bankruptcy professionals, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information. For additional information on ABI, visit www.abiworld.org. For additional conference information, visit http://www.abiworld.org/conferences.html.