MBA News: B-School Buzz

Canada’s National Post just announced its second annual MBA Portfolio Management Competition. The competition pits teams of first-year MBA students from 12 Canadian Universities against each other in a “stock-picking slug-fest” that begins this month and runs through the end of March. Contestants are given $1 Million in play funds to invest on behalf of “Mrs. Oldmoney,” whose portfolio lacks exposure to the Canadian markets. Teams may invest in cash or in any stock, income trust, or preferred share traded on the Canadian exchanges, and may alter their allocations at the end of each month. At the end of the contest, the winning team will be chosen based on their ability to generate high returns with low day-to-day volatility. To follow the contest’s progress, visit www.nationalpost.com/MBA.

This week’s Financial Times includes an article based on a recent interview with INSEAD‘s new President, Frank Brown. In the interview, Mr. Brown explains his goals for his tenure at INSEAD, including learning French, promoting the MBA degree as well as the INSEAD brand, and embarking on an extensive fund-raising campaign. For more details on Mr. Brown’s plans for INSEAD and thoughts on leadership, be sure to read the full article.

Finally, it seems students at Wharton are busy analyzing the impact of the school’s decision last spring to drop their long-time policy of Grade Non-Disclosure (GND). For those unfamiliar with the term, GND refers to a policy in place at several business schools that prohibits students from disclosing their grades to recruiters and bars recruiters from asking about grades during the job search process. The Wharton administration did away with GND over the strenuous objections of the Wharton Graduate Association, but it seems the entering first-year class has voted to abide by the new policy and to encourage members of the class to share their grades with recruiters. This week’s Wharton Journal ran an extensive opinion piece on the issue, which has also been a subject of at least one student blog.