Archive for June, 2010

By Adam Larson ‘10, MBA in Global Management

I was fortunate enough to have just completed Multinational Corporate Finance here at Thunderbird.  Multinational Corporate Finance, better known as FORAD, is a Thunderbird Integrated Experience class, an MBA version of a capstone course.  The course is (in)famous because of the trimester long group simulation testing student’s abilities to manage financial risk while running a Japanese and German subsidiary and a US holding company.

Each week teams must choose how much of each product to manufacture, how much to charge for each product, how to best hedge foreign currency risk, interest rate risk, and oil price risk, what size dividend to pay, etc.  Each week, teams enter their decisions into the computer and the simulation is run.  The results of simulation, each organization’s share price, are posted on Tuesday nights.  The class concludes with “real life” corporate treasurers analyzing the decisions made throughout the trimester in a Q&A defense.  The defense is straight forward and often quite grueling.  It is not for the weak of heart! The game requires an enormous amount of group time and individual time, but is totally worth it.  After completion of the course, there is no doubt that all students have a better idea how to manage currency exposure, oil futures, interest rate swaps, dividends, tax management, etc.

For any incoming or prospective students, I would highly recommend this class.  Besides the loads of work, it actually is a fun class that promotes competition and teamwork.  The course professor, Dr. Michael Moffett, jokes that this course may only be listed as a three credit hour class, but there is no doubt that it is closer to a nine credit hour class.  If this is true, then it makes sense why finance focused students gravitate towards this class; getting 9.0 credits worth of experience for the price of 3.0!

Adam Larson, TSG President

By David Ford ‘10, MS in Global Management

Tomorrow I formally begin my summer internship with World Fuel Services. Just one week ago I was somewhere between San Antonio and New Orleans as I took a road trip with my wife across the southern US from Phoenix to Miami. What a beautiful trip!

My wife and me on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

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By Jeremy Macdonald ‘10, MBA in Global Management

This week has been great because I am really working and moving forward on my goals for my projects.  Still whether or not I am busy fluctuates.  So much of what I do depends on my team, and there are times when I need something to do because my next task has a prerequisite that someone else owns.  So I went and found something to do.

I introduced myself to the Latin America marketing team.  Originally, I thought my internship would work with this team anyway, so I took RBE Latin America and did a report on direct-selling multivitamins in Brazil.  All of my research and analysis were really useful to leverage in this initial contact, and I am now helping to put together a presentation for a new product strategy in Latin America that is focusing on new consumer groups. (Thank goodness I have off-campus access to the IBIC resources.)  I also said that they needed to build manufacturing facilities in Brazil, but we’ll see if that gets adopted before I leave this summer.

The same day, another project manager heard about my efforts and asked me about addressing consumer needs at the bottom of the economic pyramid.  It is a strategy that I support.  It also seems like a strategy that Amway should support.  This company truly believes that they can help people by giving them quality products to sell.  I am now part of this company and I have seen that it is true.  Imagine the potential change for people in poverty that are given a quality product at price points and quantities that they can afford to buy (or finance) and sell.  Now I am helping with new product development and strategy .

I now have 5 managers that I am working with, and I love to be busy.