Beedie students to represent Canada in global KPMG Ace the Case competition

Two undergraduate students from the Beedie School of Business have won the opportunity to represent Canada at the prestigious KPMG International Case Competition (KICC).

Christian Jeffery and Juan Pablo Leal won the local and national stages of the Ace the Case competition and will now go on to compete at the KICC with the rest of their team in Hong Kong this April.

According to the official KPMG announcement: “KICC will provide Christian Jeffery and Juan Pablo Leal with exposure to KPMG leaders and professionals from around the globe, international networking opportunities, and necessary business skills to succeed as an accounting professional.”

The Ace the Case program consists of three stages of competition: local, national and global. The competition consists of a two-day workshop and competition hosted in each of KPMG’s four national offices: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. The workshops are designed and delivered by KPMG and geared towards first, second and third year commerce students with a long-term interest in pursuing a CA designation.

The local workshop provides students with an opportunity to improve case-writing and analytical skills, as well as presentation skills, in order to reach their full potential as young professionals. During day one, students primarily cover case-writing skills, including the basic approach, outlining, ranking of issues and quantitative analysis, among others. By the second day, students focus on the presentation aspect of case writing and properly presenting results as a group. Groups then go on to tackle a case head on and present solutions to a set of KPMG judges.

At the KICC, Jeffery and Leal will compete against students from across 23 participating countries. Teams will be provided with case studies based on a realistic business scenario, and will identify the key business issues and analyze, consider and develop a compelling set of recommendations to present to a panel of experienced KPMG partners and leaders from around the world.

“Ace the Case was an amazing opportunity to connect with the people of the firm, work in teams, and develop our communication and leadership skills,” said Leal. “It will be an honour to represent Simon Fraser University and Canada at the global competition in April!”

For more information on the competition, visit the Ace the Case website or watch highlights of the 2011 competition.