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The contest, featuring big-name schools, gave students the substantial challenge of analyzing the value of a privately held entity.
Baldwin Wallace University business students continue to notch impressive finishes in prestigious competitions. This month, they earned second place out of two dozen teams from elite universities in the 9th Annual Business Valuation Competition hosted by Georgia State University.
After winning the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) Cup at the beginning of the year, Jackson Mercuri '24; Jace McNulty '25; Ryan Rivera '23, MBA '24; Emily Muench '23, MBA '24; and Adam Cotte '24 set their sights on the distinctive Business Valuation Competition, which entails valuing a privately held entity.
Georgia State's J. Mack Robinson College of Business states that the Business Valuation Challenge is the only competition of its kind and offers a specialized problem to solve. "If a student can value a private business or establishment, they can value a large public company. But the converse is not the case. Valuation requirements and data limitations make the private valuation task substantially more challenging."
The 2024 competition, in collaboration with the American Society of Appraisers, required teams to estimate the fair market value of a 51% Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) for a private firm in the U.S. die-casting industry using a real-world case study.
The BW team's entry, a recorded presentation, earned a place in the live finals held November 15-16 in Atlanta. There, they went head-to-head against undergraduate and graduate students from such notable institutions as Northeastern University, the University of Texas (Dallas), Emory University, Georgia State University and Auburn University.
The BW presentation landed the team in second place, just a few points shy of the winning Auburn team's score, earning individual member recognition and a $3,000 team award.
"The result of this competition shows that BW students can perform on par with professional standards in real-world scenarios," says Cotte, who will graduate in December.
Faculty mentor Dr. Christian Nsiah says the team's work was outstanding. "Their valuation of the ESOP was remarkably accurate, closely aligning with the price at which the ESOP was sold to the company's employees. This competition provided our students with invaluable exposure to private business valuation and appraisal, an area they had not engaged with before."
Mercuri says, "This experience taught me the value of working on a project with no clear direction. I learned tenacity, perseverance, and ambition. I am forever grateful for my teammates and the opportunities that BW has given me!"
In addition to the confidence boost, the showing also elevated the reputation of students in the BW Carmel Boyer School of Business.
"Many participants and observers were unfamiliar with Baldwin Wallace before the event, and our students left a lasting impression," Nsiah reports.
Outside the competition, which was judged by some of the leading valuation experts in the world, the BW students and recent graduates also took advantage of numerous networking opportunities.
