CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) is delighted to announce that team “Apex” from the Colombo University has won the Sri Lanka round of the third Global Business Challenge (GBC), which took place on May 7, 2011 at the CIMA auditorium. The CIMA GBC 2011, which is being held in partnership with Barclays, is an international business management competition designed to bring out the best in potential business leaders among undergraduates.

The global final, will be held in Chengdu, China on July 23 and 24 and promises to be a thrilling event with 17 teams competing on an international stage for the title of ‘Global Champions’. Team ‘Apex” will be flown to the global final along with each winning team from Australia, Bangladesh, Mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Malaysia, the Middle East, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK. Once there, they will present a business case to an audience of CIMA delegates and a judging panel of prestigious experts who face the challenging task of picking the winning team. Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province in southwest China and is one of the most important economic centres in western China.

This year the competition requried applicants to analyse, report and present on a CIMA case study in the fashion industry. In Sri Lanka 25 teams from 9 universities registered for the competition. The reports submitted were individually analysed by the panel of judges and four teams were selected for the local final, teams ‘Stark’ and ‘Inspire’ from the University of Moratuwa team ‘Apex’ from university of Colombo and team “Blaze’ from university of Kelaniya.

The winning team “Apex” was led by Vindya Cooray and comprised, Dilani Angela Ratnarajah, Poorna Manushka and Asvini Ramanathan. The first runner up in the competition was “Stark” from the university of Moratuwa while team “Blaze” from University of Kelaniya was adjudged as the second runner up .
Speaking at the finals, Chief Guest Dr Sunil Nawaratne, Secretary Ministry of Higher Education commended CIMA on providing the undergraduates such an opportunity to showcase their talent and emphasised that programmes of this nature would undoubtedly help realise the government’s objective of making Sri Lanka a knowledge hub. The panel of judges at the Sri Lanka finals were Mr Stephen Callander Financial decision support, Asia Pacific -Director, representing the sponsor Barclays Capital, Ravi Abeysuriya – CEO, Heraymila Securities Ltd ( formally Managing Director of Amba Research Lanka and Fitch Ratings Lanka), Mr. Senaka Kakiriwaragoda Assistant Vice President Corporate Advisory of NDB Bank, Mr Fouzul Hameed Managing director of Hameedias and Mr Nathan Sivagananathan Chief Executive Officer of MAS Intimates and MAS Design.

Vindya Cooray team leader of ‘Apex’ speaking on their achievement said ‘commitment and teamwork were the secrets behind our success. Although we had a busy schedule with exams and were from different departments, we still made it a point to find a time slot that all of us were free, which was after 5 p.m. We stayed till late to make sure that we will do our best. So we basically had to do lot of sacrifices taking the competition as a challenge, as we were from different departments there was a good combination. We did a lot of research and even on the morning of the competition we went online and updated with the latest financial data.

When analyzing the case we questioned ourselves, debated among each other and it helped us to better handle the Q & A session. We practised the presentation so that we will manage our time well’. Vindya also wished to mention a word of thanks to both the academic as well as the non academic staff of the University of Colombo and also to friends from the faculty as well as from other faculties who helped them with this achievement.

CIMA has launched a Facebook page for the global competition which allows students to share pictures, upload videos and get involved in GBC discussions. Follow the GBC journey and support your team on Facebook www.cimaglobal.com/gbcfacebook.