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In the middle of the winter holiday period, I was lucky enough to be a member of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management’s team who competed in the Financial Times MBA Quiz. We were a diverse team made up of members from Masters of International Business (Samantha Wong and Marius Klee), Business Administration (Eric Bishop) and Finance (Sandra Schӧnhage and myself). After our initial meeting on campus, organised by our trip “mother” Emma Camoni, we felt well prepared for the upcoming quiz.
Reading the FT while waiting for our flight
After checking the FT headlines for the morning, we flew to London on Tuesday the 24th of February ready to compete that evening. We were very grateful for Emma’s expert organisational and tour-guide skills, masterfully combining local knowledge of things like the Heathrow Express (which saved us almost an hour getting from Heathrow to our accommodation) with pointing out general tourist attractions as we walked to the Financial Times offices.
Despite the hectic morning schedule departing from Frankfurt, we still managed to arrive at the Financial Times offices first (which was “compulsory” given we were the only German team) and had time to participate in a few interviews with the FS film crew who documented the evening. The other schools began to arrive as we were conducting these interviews and it was a fantastic opportunity to meet other students from some of the best Business School’s from around Europe. We also were introduced to employees of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) – an organisation who deliver aid around the world to those whose lives are affected by natural disaster or conflict and who are also the FT’s chosen charity for 2015. We were pleased to find out, as the evening progressed, that with the support of the UK government, £40k was raised to support IRC’s ongoing projects.
As we wrapped up our introductions, we made our way upstairs to the Quiz area and took our places. Despite the fact that it was a room full students waiting to undertake a finance quiz, the atmosphere was as lively as a football stadium pre-kick-off and it took our Quiz Master, Andrew Hill, several attempts to begin the event. The subject areas included World News, Companies, Life & Arts and FT Lexicon and Illustrations (to name a few) and the questions really were as diverse as the topic headings suggest – from recognising an illustration of Mario Draghi balancing on a wire, taunting Europe with a QE money bag, to Alibaba’s record breaking IPO. Despite a solid performance across each topic, we didn’t place in the top two teams meaning we were part of the audience for the final round. This head-to-head section was competed between Imperial College Business School and St Gallan’s and Imperial ended up running out winners for the second year running.
The FS Team at the FT MBA Quiz
We had a couple of breaks between Quiz sections and I was very lucky to have a brief conversation with Stefanie Pfeil, the Director of External Relations (UK) of IRC. This was particularly enlightening for me as she described the ongoing challenges that IRC faces as they attempt to continue fighting preventable diseases in Africa. These challenges stretch from how to more efficiently deliver vaccinations (the topic of the FT MBA Case Challenge later in the year) to improving education targeting the reduction of practices that currently spread diseases. It was truly inspiring hearing first-hand the work the IRC are doing.
After the Quiz finished up, Emma had one last surprise organised for us – tables booked at Bounce, a restaurant in London which also provides about 12 table-tennis tables for patrons. After a frantic day, having a couple of games of table-tennis with my team mates was a great to unwind and wrapped up the evening wonderfully before our return to Frankfurt the next morning!
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