How SFU Business fared in the news for the week of March 5, 2009

BC News

• Associate dean Ed Bukszar of SFU Business was on FairchildTV, talking about the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cut to 0.5%, and what the bank or the federal government might consider next to give the economy a reboot.
• The Georgia Straight looked at the impact on consumersof the recession. Among others, it quoted marketing prof Lindsay Meredith: “It’s the lower-economic crowd who really, really have to cut back. So even Wal-Mart, for example . . . might find a bit of a decrease in sales.

Business

• John Peloza, assistant prof at the Segal Graduate School of Business, wrote a guest column in the Financial Post section of National Post on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship to profitability. “Studies typically find a small but positive relationship between the two, suggesting that CSR can, in fact, be profitable. But (it) requires far greater management skill than simply writing a cheque to a local charity.”
• The Financial Post noted the MBA class of 2009 is graduating into the worst job market for MBAs in years. But it featured as a success story three MBA 2006 grads from SFU Business, the founders of Pacifica Capital Management: A. J. Sull, Aman Bhangu and Naveen Gopal. They launched the firm “as career prospects dimmed or vanished with their previous employers.” Now it has exceeded its partners’ expectations, and has managed to increase its client base through referrals by about 10%.
• Coming up: Andrey Pavlov will be on The Current on CBC Radio tomorrow, Friday, 8:30 am. He’ll be speaking to the relevance/effectiveness of financial modeling given the financial meltdown few predicted, and how business schools and MBA programs are changing how they teach them.