Victory and a third place on the podium obtained by GTK students at the global case competition hosted by IE Business School!

Between February 18-23, 2024 the IE Business School in Madrid (Spain) organized an international business case competition consisting of two separate challenges, a one-week case solving and a 24 hour case challenge. Students representing the Babeș-Bolyai University and GTK Business Consulting Club had a remarcable performance during the event, being the only team to qualify to the final of both challenges, obtaining first place in the one-week case challenge, and achieveing an excellent third place on the podium of the 24-hour casechallenge.

The team representing the Hungarian Institute of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the Babeș-Bolyai University – Cluj-Napoca and the GTK Business Consulting Club was composed of András Antal (Finance and Banking, 3rd year), Anna Bugár (Finance and Banking, 3rd year), Kata Kovács (Finance and Banking, 3rd year) and Krisztián Tófalvi (Business Information Systems, 2nd year). The team was accompanied to the competition by Dr. Levente Szász, professor, and also assisted by professors Dr. Béla-Gergely Rácz and Dr. Lehel Györfy. In the first competition, the university teams had to develop a short and long-term strategy for the Sushita restaurant chain, while in the second competition they had to develop a strategic plan for the expansion of a global hotel chain, Radisson in Asia.

During the one-week challenge, the team from Cluj-Napoca made it to the finals of the competition, beating teams from the US, Germany and Mexico, and with an excellent performance they reached the top of the podium, ahead of the finalists IE Business School (Spain) and Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (Germany).

The one-week challenge was followed by a 24-hour case study solving, where the GTK team also excelled in the qualifying group, beating teams from the host Spanish and Mexican universities and finishing third in the finals, behind teams from BI Norwegian Business School and the University of Southern California & Marshall School of Business, both from the US.

Dr. Levente Szász, professor, vice dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, GTK coordinator and the team’s coach, said the following about the successful participation: “It is a great pleasure for us to see that the high-quality educational activities within BBU can stand their ground on the international stage, and in many cases even achieve such outstanding results. In the case of the competition in Spain, the organisers also highlighted the fact that, although two separate competition trials were held, the team from Cluj-Napoca was the only one to stand on the podium in both challenges, consistently performing outstandingly throughout the competition, where they had to present and defend their work in front of a panel of judges made up of corporate and academic professionals.”

Congratulations to our GTK team and their coaches for their outstanding success!