Finance graduate students win ACG Cup Case Competition in Tampa

GAINESVILLE, Fla. –  A team of three Master of Science in Finance (MSF) students came out as the winning team in the ACG Cup Tampa Bay Case Competition hosted in March.

Reinaldo (Rey) Cevallos, Kristen Mousa and Sami Qubain, all senior MSF students, bested teams from the University of South Florida, Rollins College and the University of Tampa to win the ACG Cup Tampa Bay. This is the second year in a row that a team from the University of Florida Warrington College of Business has won the case competition.

The ACG Cup is a case study competition designed to give students from leading MBA and graduate business programs across the country invaluable insights into mergers and acquisitions, investment banking, financial advisory and private equity.

“The quantitative nature of the case gave us great exposure to the type of work we will be doing when we graduate,” Mousa said. “All three of us will be working full-time in New York City. I will be at Deutsche Bank, Rey at Citi and Sami at J.P. Morgan.”

The team took home $8,500, a plaque and the coved ACG Cup trophy, which they will keep on display at UF until next year’s competition. The students were also awarded tickets to ACG Capital Connection, a large networking event for finance professionals. Tickets are valued at $500, and the event will focus on corporate growth and middle market deal-making.

For the case competition, the team was asked to evaluate various strategic alternatives for a company in the defense sector. They were required to perform multiple valuation analyses, including discounted cash-flow models, merger models and a leveraged buyout model, in order to determine which alternative made the most financial sense for the company and its shareholders.

“The case was only given to us one week before the competition date, so the team put in a lot of hours in a short amount of time to ensure our analysis and presentation were as accurate and compelling as possible,” Mousa said. “In addition to the immense learning experience that the competition provided, winning the competition really validated the time and effort we put in.”