GTK alumni members reach the finals and win a special prize at the case study competition held by University of Vermont in the United States

The 11th edition of the Schlesinger Global – Family Enterprise Case Competition, organised by the University of Vermont, USA, took place from 10-13 January 2024. A total of 24 universities from 12 different countries representing 5 different continents participated in the competition. The Hungarian student team from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and from the GTK Business Consulting Club competed in the Master’s and MBA student leagues, where they reached the final round on the basis of their excellent performance in the three preliminary rounds and the overall score. Following this great performance, Péter Szekernyés, a member of the team from the GTK, was awarded the special prize for best presenter.

The team from Cluj-Napoca consisted of Kende Pásztor, Evelin-Beáta Székely, Péter Szekernyés and Dóra Szőke, all four of them first-year master’s students in Business Management. During the competition, the teams from the participating universities solved a total of four cases, the first case they had to prepare for one week before the competition, and the remaining three cases they had to solve on the spot. They had a total of 4 hours to solve each case study they got during the competition week.

The case studies of the competition were unusual in terms of topic, as they were all related to family businesses, addressing issues such as succession and the challenges and opportunities of corporate management structures in family businesses. According to the organisers, the competition is therefore the most prestigious professional competition in the world on the subject of family business.

In the qualifying groups, the team from Cluj-Napoca competed against teams from the Indian School of Business, Heilbronn University from Germany and National Taiwan University from Taiwan, while in the masters’ league, the team from the Sasin School of Management -Thailand took the highest step on the podium.

The coaches of the GTK team were Dr. Lehel Györfy, Dr. Béla Rácz and Dr. Levente Szász. Congratulations to the team for their excellent performance!