BETA, IIM Ahmedabad’s Finance and Investments club, is all set to host the inaugural edition of EXCHEQUER – a national level financial services competition. Through EXCHEQUER, BETA aims to open up a platform, in which teams comprising the brightest students from India’s best B-Schools compete to emerge as the Best B-School in Finance in India. The first of its kind event in the B-school landscape, Exchequer is being held over two stages – with 25 teams participating in the online rounds, from which 8 teams survived for the Grand Finale.
Over the last one month, nominated teams from the top 25 Indian B-Schools were invited to participate in Stage I of Exchequer which was hosted by BETA, the Finance and Investments Club of IIMA in association with UBS. The event tested the teams across the four major verticals of finance. The four sub-events, namely, Arbitrage (Capital Markets), DealMaker (Investment Banking), Leverage (PE/VC) and White Knight (Retail Banking) presented problems tempered with real world constraints to the competing teams such that their knowledge and skills were tested to the extreme.
Teams had to go through a grueling set of problems in all the four event verticals and their submissions were judged by eminent personalitites from the banking industry as well as academicians. Finally, 8 teams have emerged from the intense competitions as most worthy of making it to the finals. Although, the list throws up some expected names, it also surprises on a few counts with several notable exceptions. The list of eight that will battle it out in the finals are IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode, XLRI Jamshedpur, ISB Hyderabad and Institute of Management, Nirma University.
The event organizers are proud to have 3i, Axis Bank and UBS as its partners for the event. UBS, the principal partner for this event, is a global financial services firm with presence in 50 countries and employing more than 64,000 people. Private equity firm 3i and domestic retail banking giant Axis Bank are the knowledge partners for Leverage and White Knight respectively.
The Grand Finale is slated to be held over the 25th and 26th of September at the IIMA campus and shall comprise the final rounds based on the above four verticals. Eminent personalities from within the banking industry, academicians and industry persons will now descend on the IIMA campus as judges and guests for the event wherein all the 8 selected teams will now compete against each other. Going by the closely fought nature of the preliminary rounds, the final rounds at IIMA now are set for a tense and tight battle to decide “The Best Indian B-School in the Financial Services Domain”.
Post: Anindya Dutta
Secretary, Beta
Inside IIMA 
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