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October 27, 2009. Vancouver, BC. Julia Dorofeeva lives at UBC's MBA House. Business school expansions for the Report on MBA Schools. Photo: Laura Leyshon for the Globe and MailLAURA LEYSHON/The Globe and Mail

At this very moment, reams of eager undergraduate and MBA students are hunkered down in Vancouver, racing to put together presentations for a complex investment banking case study.

The students, from schools across North America, awoke before dawn. After six hours of rampant research and financial modelling, they will present their ideas to a panel of judges. From there, the top teams will fan out across the city to present to regional heads of Canadian investment banks in Vancouver board rooms, and an elite group will then be invited to present at a gala dinner tonight.

The hard work is all part of the National Investment Banking Competition & Conference, run by students at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business. What started as an internal case competition at UBC in 2007 has evolved into a major conference and event. This year the speakers include the likes of Doug Guzman, head of investment banking at RBC Dominion Securities, Harry Culham, co-head of wholesale banking at CIBC World Markets and William John, head of fixed income for Phillips, Hager & North in Vancouver.

The big name speakers and unique case competition are attracting more students each year. This year 160 case teams participated, up from 126 in 2012, and nearly 600 people are attending the conference.

For students, it's a top notch learning experience. While most case competitions focus on marketing or strategy, this one is all about investment banking, and the cases are designed to mimic what it's like to be an analyst or an associate – which is important because at school you learn about Modigliani-Miller, while in the real world you spend half your day finding comps.

The two-day conference is also a recruiting dream. The students are surrounded by big names, and the case teams get to show off their best stuff. The opportunity to network is particularly important for students from schools like UBC, because "it's tough on the west coast to get noticed," said David Lam, the chairperson for this year's conference. For finance, Toronto is the hiring hub.

Although the conference is now officially in its fourth year, an earlier version of it, sponsored by Macquarie, started in 2007 and it was solely for UBC students. After two years some former students decided to open it up and make it a national event, and aggressively sought sponsorship money from the likes of RBC Dominion Securities, TD Securities and National Bank Financial.

As the conference grew, the organizing team reached out to more schools and this year case teams from big U.S. MBA programs such as UCLA and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business are attending. These students will face off against undergrads and MBAs from a slew of other North American schools.

But the case is only half of the draw. As the conference grew, the students who organize it put together a board of directors who carry some weight, including Kathy Butler from CIBC and Tracey McVicar from CAI Private Equity, who used their connections to pull in speakers such as Teck Resources' Don Lindsay.

At the conference, the speakers run through different sessions such as the IPO process and investment banking valuations, and the cases are designed to focus on topical issues. In recent years they've included assessing a junior miner and determining whether the company should develop its project or sell.

For the students, two things are top of mind: money and recruiting. The winning team gets $5,000 – a decent sum for budget-conscious students – and in past years the conference generated interviews and even jobs, according to Philip Chua, a board member who is instrumental in putting the case together.

That's music to students' ears, because it's slim pickings for jobs right now.

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Tickers mentioned in this story

Study and track financial data on any traded entity: click to open the full quote page. Data updated as of 28/03/24 4:15pm EDT.

SymbolName% changeLast
CM-N
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
+1.3%50.72
CM-T
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
+1.13%68.67
TECK-N
Teck Resources Ltd
+4.23%45.78

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