Media Matters – SFU Business Professors in the News

Oct 31, 2008

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week of October 31, 2008.

National Post featured a guest piece from SFU Business profs Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent on why so many luxury brand extensions fail. (Think Pierre Cardin and Diane von Furstenberg.) The article was a short version of a study to appear later in Business Horizons.

Canwest News Service reported those $34,500 exclusive ticket packages to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games have already sold out. The paper quoted marketing prof Judy Zaichkowsky: “This is a rich person’s event. There are people from all over the world who make the Olympics their No. 1 holiday. It doesn’t matter what the stock market does. They have money in the bank.” We saw the story in, among others, National Post, The Vancouver Sun and the Victoria Times Colonist.

The Financial Post section of National Post launched its fourth annual MBA Portfolio Management. It reported the team from the U of Manitoba took the early lead among the 16 squads. SFU Business stood at No. 13.

Burnaby Now featured Metrolyrics, an online database of song lyrics launched by business administration student Milun Tesovic. He and his company were also in The Peak and in SFU News this week. Metrolyrics has more than 27 million unique users a month and is the ninth largest music site in North America.

Amir Rubin, assistant business prof, was in the Georgia Straight in a story about the impact on pensions of the stock-market turbulence: “It wouldn’t be surprising if the value of the pensions went down, depending on their mix. Going down between 10 to 20 percent in the last few months isn’t going to be surprising.” Rubin’s photo was in there, too.

Canadian Business carried a guide to MBA/EMBA programs, noting SFU’s Segal Graduate School of Business “shook up its EMBA program this year by shortening it from two years to 19 months, compressing the schedule in order to get execs out the door and earning faster.”Among student stories it cited was that of Zahwil Dossa, an EMBA candidate who is also general manager at the family bakery, Stuyver’s Bakestudio in Burnaby. He did his undergraduate degree in business administration at SFU.

Beedie School of Business