CIMA challenges SL students to be global business leaders

Wednesday, 27 March 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Ambitious business students across the world are given the opportunity to gain global exposure and business skills for the future courtesy of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountant’s (CIMA) Global Business Challenge (GBC).

The 2013 CIMA GBC, which held in partnership with Barclays, is an international business management competition open to full time undergraduates of the public and private colleges and universities. The competition is designed to bring out the best in potential young business leaders.

It provides students with a fantastic opportunity to test their financial knowledge and expand upon their competitive ability. In addition, it has previously led to internship opportunities from well-known organisations.

Barclays Asia Pacific FCMA CGMA Finance Chief Operating Officer Deepesh Lad said: “Barclays supports the CIMA GBC as global headline sponsor because the program helps to give students firsthand experience of dealing with real challenges faced by global organisations today.

“These valuable experiences significantly enhance business skills among its participants to any firm and something we want to provide our full backing to.”

CIMA offers an international qualification in management accountancy and is the world’s leading and largest management accounting professional body. Each team will be expected to analyse, report and present on a CIMA case study. The winning team from each region will be flown to the global final in South Africa in July or August to compete against 25 other regions for the title of global champions.

The teams from many continents will be taking part including Australia, Bangladesh, Mainland China, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, the Middle East, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the UK, Vietnam, Zambia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Thailand.

CIMA FCMA, CGMA, Managing Director Andrew Harding said: “After the phenomenal success of last year’s competition; CIMA is excited to launch the fifth GBC. The fact that Zimbabwe, Myanmar and Thailand are taking part for the first time shows the ever increasing global appeal of the competition.

“Many of the world’s most respected business leaders qualify with CIMA. We currently have over 195,000 members and students in 176 countries. As such the competition represents a real opportunity to showcase the global business leaders of the future.”

Indivisibles from Exeter University in the UK were crowned champions at the 2012 global final held in Sri Lanka. The team beat nearly 14,000 international students and applicants before being assessed by a panel of industry expert judges from organisations across the globe to emerge as the first winning team from Europe.

The winner of the Future Business Leader award was Sizwe Nxumalo Monomotapa from the University of Witwatersrand South Africa.

The country finale will take place on 15 June 2013. For more information log onto www.cimaglobal.com/gbc2013 or join the GBC facebook page www.facebook.com/cimagbc for regular updates and information on the teams.