Business School Students Won the Southern District Championship of the Sixth IMA Student Case Competition

On April 23, 2016, led by Director Kai YU and Professor Aidong LIU of Accounting Department of Business School, the Firelight, namely Zhen TONG, Zhaohuan ZHANG, Huanxia GAO, Jiawen LI and Zijian SI, five graduate students of Business Administration, 2015 cohort, won the Southern District championship of the Sixth IMA Student Case Competition, which has qualified them for National finals as the representative of Southern District.

Hosted by Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), IMA Student Case Competition (hereinafter referred as Case Competition) is not only a global campus competition to broaden students’ horizons and improve their all-round competence, but also a platform for academic exchanges in international accounting community. Lasting for more than seven months from trials to national finals, the Case Competition is the accounting academic competition with the largest number of participants, the longest tournament and the highest standard, internationally and domestically. The former five competitions had raised the attention of more than 1 million college students from nearly 500 colleges and universities with 700 advisor teachers and over 8,000 student participants, among which there were 500 outstanding contestants hired by well-known enterprises. The Case Competition is honoured by academics and practitioners.

This Case Competition attracted nearly 349 teams with 1,800 students from 115 colleges and universities, and each district will generate one championship team for the national finals. As the only team of Central South University, Firelight, composed by Zhen TONG and other Business School students, braved trials and district semifinals. In the finals (other district final teams include 3 teams from Hunan University and one team from Sun Yat-Sen University and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan Province respectively), they earned their names and championship with their clear case analysis in fluent English from professional management accounting perspective, which has been highly appreciated by the judges. This was the second time Central South University participated in Case Competition and was qualified for the national finals as the district victor.

This year will see eight teams qualified for the finals. In accordance with the competition schedule, Firelight, as a representative of the Central South University, will enter the arena with other seven district champions at Peking University on May 7, 2016. The finals will be conducted in English. The national championship team will represent China to attend the IMA 97th Annual Conference with a presentation in this June in Los Angeles, the United States.