On November 30, 2015 'IDLC presents BLUEPRINTS 1.0' powered by Teletalk, Freedom and Seven Rings Cement ended with a grand finale in the Plaza area of North South University where a huge crowd of finance enthusiasts witnessed the three winning teams of the first ever financial modelling competition in the history of this country.
A shareholder or an investor, a financial analyst or a business student --whoever you are, if you want to get an insight about how a company is doing, financial statements such as income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements are the fundamental financial reports that would give you the best picture about how the company has been doing for the last few years. However, things are not as simple when you would want to know how the company or the project will do in the future because the days that are coming in the future are not certain and have potential for various possibilities. Financial modelling is a skill of forecasting the future financial statements and giving a picture of the company or a project for the next few years. This expertise- oriented skill is practically used by all the financial analysts throughout the world where they make many realistic assumptions about the future, take into account various possibilities and forecast the future financials of the project or the company.
Even though this financial modelling skill is a must for any financial analyst, never in this country perhaps any initiative was taken that would help the undergraduate business students learn this skill before NSU Finance Club came up with BLUEPRINTS 1.0, a financial modelling competition presented by IDLC. The competition was initiated with a broad intention of focusing young minds on the potential opportunities in the financial sector of the country. As many as 156 teams (with around 600 participants) participated in the competition from different parts of the country.
"The aim is to help finance students learn the skill of financial modelling that would add value to their professional career," said Reyasat Chowdhury, president and the main initiator of the competition.
The competition started with its first round workshop on November 7, 2015 in AUDI 801 of the NSU campus. In the workshop, financial experts drilled the participants about the essential concepts that participants needed to excel in the first round as well the overall competition in general. The workshop was followed by a case which all the participating teams had to solve for the first round of the competition. Out of the 156 teams, 30 teams could make it to the second round. The second round workshop was held on November 13 in Saad Musa City Centre which was conducted by the structural finance experts of IDLC. They showed the round-2 participants how an actual financial model in microsoft excel looks like and how to prepare one for the round-2 and the final round of the competition. For the round-2, participants were given a case on the spinning mill industry in the context of Bangladesh which they had to solve and present on November 21 in front of three panels of judges. Nine teams went to the final of the competition from these thirty teams.
The grand finale of BLUEPRINTS 1.0 was enhanced by Bangladesh Finance Symposium- a daylong conference organised by NSU Finance Club where the finance enthusiasts of the country gathered to listen to the finance professionals talk about the potentials of the financial markets and institutions in Bangladesh, and the career in finance for the graduates. The three winning teams of BLUEPRINTS 1.0 were awarded for their achievement in front of over 250 participants of the conference.
The champion team of the first financial modelling competition was a team from NSU namely The Finance Crunchers. Thin Guys and Fat Ladies was the first runner-up team and second runner- up team was The Trilemma-- both the teams coming from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University.
Avilash Roy, one of the finalists of the competition said, "BLUEPRINTS 1.0 has created a platform for the finance graduates to showcase their financial knowledge, skills through this competition learning and how to prepare an actual financial model from the professionals was a new experience."
NSU finance Club is a newly established club under the NSU School of Business and Economics which aims to help students have professional development in terms of skills, ethics and personality. BLUEPRINTS 1.0 is the flagship competition of NSU Finance Club which the club has organised within one year of its inception.
The writer is a sub-executive body member of Finance Club (North South University),
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
