In the grand finale of international Finance Challenge #LifeasaNyenrodian

''When we started at Nyenrode, we wouldn’t have dared to hope that we would end up in the finals of the SSE Riga Challenge." Mike van de Goor, Juliëtte Penning and Bart van Campenhout, Full-time MSc in Management students, share their experience representing Nyenrode at the SSE Riga Finance Challenge.

''The SSE Riga Finance Challenge is a competition for students from all over the world. It is held in Riga and hosted by the Stockholm School of Economics. The challenge is organized by the SSE Riga Investment Fund, a student-run organization that shares remarkable similarities with De Zilveren Rijder (The largest investment association managed by students in the Netherlands with a portfolio of over 100,000 EUR in Dutch equities) here at Nyenrode. Over 150 student teams participate in this competition every year, and this year we decided to join as well due to excellent promotion by the program management team.

Who are we?

We are Bart, Juliëtte and Mike, three students from cohort MSc26 of the MSc in Financial Management, halfway through our studies. We have just started the finance specialization. This competition required us to answer two preliminary rounds of questions on corporate finance, financial reporting, valuation, investment banking and many other topics. We were well prepared because most of this information had been covered in class. The two courses on Advanced Corporate Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions & Private Equity were especially helpful for us.

We are in the finals!

After quite a few late-night efforts in the library working on the assignments, we finally handed them in. We anxiously waited for the results. After two days we received an email with the subject line: Finance Challenge 2018 FINALISTS. We were surprised and happy that we made it, since we did not expect to get to the finals at all with so many teams involved. On Saturday we were back in the library studying, and that may not sound like a perfect weekend, but hey – we are finalists going to Riga. Amazing!

Out of the 508 finance students from all over the world, our group from Nyenrode is in the finals. Most of the selected students already have a Bachelor’s in finance. In contrast, two students in our group do not even have a financial background. However, we made up for this by providing pure mathematical power. Mike, who has a background in finance, makes sure that the calculations are in line with the conventions. Moreover, we all gained a great deal of knowledge during the first few months of the Master’s program at Nyenrode.

This proves that Nyenrode is able to educate its students better and in a shorter time span than comparable Master’s programs, since the Nyenrode students are the ones in the finals – these are the facts. International exposure is a key element in this challenge, and we have set our sights on making sure Riga gets to know the Nyenrodian way of working.

It’s all happening this weekend!

We will fly to Riga this Friday the 18^th of May, but first we need to take two exams. This is the perfect warm-up for the challenge, as our knowledge on finance will be tested just before we go to Riga. Nyenrode has supported us throughout the process and always encourages students’ efforts to stand out in competitions. The university does this in two ways: first by making sure that students are taught the essential knowledge they need, and second by helping students arrange their trips.''