Winners named in Verney case competition

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A team of five MBA students from the University at Buffalo School of Management will share a $2,000 prize as winner of the school’s seventh annual Steven C. Verney MBA Case Competition.

Placing first in the event were Satya Chavali of Hyderabad, India; Nicholas D’Ambrosio of Rochester; Meghan Lafferty of East Aurora; Yoshiki Moroe of Tokyo, Japan; and Michael Simich of Holland.

All first-year MBAs in the school’s full-time program took part in the competition. Eighteen teams made presentations to six panels of judges over the course of four days in April, and the award winners were announced on April 29.

Each team was assigned a separate case focusing on a distressed company facing serious operational and financial issues. Participants had to formulate a plan to turn around the troubled company and improve its long-term prospects for survival.

The competition was created exclusively for first-year MBA students at the UB School of Management through a donation from Steven C. Verney, executive vice president and chief risk officer at Allstate Insurance Co. in Chicago, who received his bachelor’s degree from UB in 1980 and his MBA in 1981.

Several judges from UB also participated: Arjang Assad, dean, School of Management; Beth del Genio, chief of staff for UB President Satish K. Tripathi; Katherine Ferguson, associate dean of academic programs, School of Management; Saira Hasnain, director, enterprise infrastructure services; John Ho, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School; Laura Hubbard, vice president of finance and administration; Nancy Kielar, assistant vice president/chief of staff, CIO Administrative Operations Office; Amy Monin, research administrator, Department of Electrical Engineering; and Courtney Walsh, assistant dean of executive education, School of Management.

The second-place team received a prize of $1,000.

The UB School of Management is recognized for its emphasis on real-world learning, community and economic impact, and the global perspective of its faculty, students and alumni. The school has been ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek, the Financial Times, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal for the quality of its programs and the return on investment it provides its graduates. For more information about the UB School of Management, visit http://mgt.buffalo.edu.