VCU news

By Grace Douglas

For the second year in a row, a team of Virginia Commonwealth University students reached the finals of the Duff & Phelps YOUniversity Deal Challenge.

Conrad Roos, Shayan Dareikia and Ishan Bose formed this year’s team. Faculty adviser Cory Bunting, director of the Capital Markets Center in the School of Business, accompanied the students earlier this semester to New York City, where they delivered their presentation before the panel of judges.  

Each team was assigned a company, for which they had to come up with a strategic and financial buyer. Having researched potential buyers and determined the company’s worth, the VCU team’s collaborative final project consisted of a slide deck of market research on its client. It included competing companies, evaluation and analysis of television ratings, along with a strategy to address the growth in online media viewing.

Overall it was an invaluable experience.

The VCU presentation placed second in the competition and each student received $2,000 in scholarship money.

“Overall it was an invaluable experience,” said Roos, a junior studying chemical engineering in the School of Engineering. “Besides the practice gained through valuing the companies and preparing the slide deck, presenting in front of the firm’s management was a unique experience that really drove home the value of preparation.”

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