Magnus Aaserud, Derek Cook & Sandeep Bahniwal

The Okanagan School of Business broke new ground on Sunday, Jan. 11 after accounting students Magnus Aaserud and Sandeep Bahniwal placed third at the Inter-Collegiate Business Competition (I.C.B.C.) hosted by Queen’s University in Kingston.

Considered Canada’s premier undergraduate business case analysis competition, I.C.B.C. is an annual event that measures the real-world skills of business students from across the country. In November all of the major business schools in Canada assemble teams who start by competing in a timed case analysis. Once all of the submissions have been judged the top six are invited to Queen’s University to compete in the final face-to-face round. 

After knocking off several top universities in the preliminary round in November, the team of Aaserud and Bahniwal spent several weeks preparing for the finals with their coaches, Randy Newton and Derek Cook, both professors in the Okanagan School of Business.

Cook accompanied the duo to Kingston where they were presented with their business case before being secluded and given five-and-a-half hours to analyze the case, prepare a PowerPoint and give a 15-minute presentation to a panel of seven industry professionals.

“It’s a given that the teams who qualified for the final round are all well prepared to analyze a business case and find solutions to a problem,” explained Cook. “The key to success in the competition is being well prepared for the presentation and the ability to think on your feet in front of the judges.”

Aaserud and Bahniwal broke their presentation into four segments and after supporting their solutions, took questions from the judges. Of the six post-secondary teams in the accounting division Okanagan College finished third behind the winners from the University of Western Ontario and the second-place team from Memorial University. Rounding out the top six were Simon Fraser University, Saint Mary’s University and the University of Manitoba.

“It’s a great achievement just to make it to the finals and placing third was very exciting,” said Aaserud. “It wasn’t easy, it was very tough and we were very impressed with the overall caliber of the competition. Although we spent most of our time working on the analysis and PowerPoint and had little time to actually practice our presentation, I think we presented in a very confident manner. Sandeep did a great job of thinking on his feet and handled some tough questions very well.”

“Derek and Randy along with a number of other professors in the Okanagan School of Business really came together to help us prepare for the competition,” said Bahniwal. “It was really a great team effort. Finishing in the top three in the country makes me very proud to attend Okanagan College. We may be smaller than the universities we were up against but we proved that we can compete with anyone.”

Cook had the opportunity to watch his team perform and also sat in on a number of the final presentations in many of the six different categories. The preliminary and final rounds included 138 teams from 28 schools, including four from Asia and two from the United States.

“There were 102 students in the final round of the competition and they were a really bright group of people,” said Cook. “I have no doubt the Okanagan School of Business is in the running with the big business schools in the country. Our top students are as capable as any students in Canada and would be successful at any of the schools that we competed against.”