CATÓLICA-LISBON students Cecilia Backström, Christian Cassisi and Jorge Zips won the Iberian final of the Accuracy Business Cup 2024, and are now qualified to participate in the international final, which will take place on March 21-22 in Paris. The Accuracy Business Cup is a financial and strategic challenge organized by Accuracy, an independent global consulting firm with headquarters in Paris and offices in various parts of the world.
The CATÓLICA-LISBON team will now compete against the national winning teams from the other participating offices: Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, in the international final, where they will present their work in front of a jury made up of Accuracy partners and top management from Sanofi, the partner company in this year's edition.
"This is the first time that a team from CATÓLICA-LISBON has been selected in this competition, so we couldn't be more pleased and prouder. This important achievement is a further proof of the talent of our Master students, who will thus take the name of CATÓLICA-LISBON and Portugal further in a competition that aims to highlight the best works on financial business cases," says Kyryl Lakishyk, Associate Professor of Marketing and Academic Director of the Master's Programs in Management at CATÓLICA-LISBON.
For the student Cecilia Backström, taking part in the Accuracy Business Cup "has been tough but rewarding. Balancing cases with university work was challenging but pushing through the first stage felt motivating. The Madrid final was a highlight, and I'm excited about the upcoming stage in Paris”.
For his part, Christian Cassisi highlights the fact that "real-life cases give an example of the tasks or challenges which can appear in the real consulting world. Also working together with a real client (in our example Sanofi, the 6th biggest company in France) makes the challenge more exciting”.
Jorge Zips is equally enthusiastic and stresses that "one of the most important aspects is working together as a team and benefiting from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds. The tasks are challenging and require a lot of ambition and motivation to master them but if you have a great team, you are supporting each other and can achieve a lot”.
All the teams are given the same business case, which this year focused on the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. "Our first task involved analyzing Sanofi's stock price development and forecasting dividends for 2024. The top 4 teams proceeded to pitch an Acquisition case to a jury consisting of Accuracy partners and Sanofi's Iberia CFO in the national final in Madrid. Now, we're looking forward for the global final in Paris, awaiting the next challenge”, explains Cecilia Backström.
According to Christian Cassisi, based on the jury's decision, which led to the CATÓLICA-LISBON students going through to the international final, was the strong investment in research and the degree of information coverage with background knowledge, as well as a good distribution of tasks between the team members that allowed for greater specialization. In the end, he adds, "we were all able to provide confident and sophisticated answers. We went the extra mile in every aspect of the project, which paid off in the final”.
Organized every year in partnership with a major stock exchange company, the Accuracy Business Cup is an international competition that offers students from the best management and engineering schools around the world the opportunity to work on real financial and strategic business cases under the guidance of senior Accuracy consultants.