Lindner MBA Students Reclaim ACG Cup in Premier Competition

After a yearlong hiatus, the ACG Cup trophy is back at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business.

The five-member MBA team from the Lindner College of Business recaptured the trophy on Feb. 20 in the sixth annual Association for Corporate Growth Cincinnati Cup competition held at the Cintas Center on the campus of Xavier University. The win marks the fourth time in six years that students from the Lindner College of Business emerged as winners of the prestigious case study competition.

MBA students Michael Krommer, Gina Kruetzkamp, Liz Urso, Brian O’Keeffe and Andrew Rizzi emerged as winners to reclaim the ACG Cup trophy and a $5,000 prize, besting teams from Xavier and Miami University.

The MBA team win comes on the heels of the Lindner College of Business recently being ranked the most improved MBA program in the country in 2012 by findyourmba.com.

F. Robert Dwyer, the Joseph S. Stern Professor of Marketing and academic director of MBA programs in the Lindner College of Business, says Lindner faculty and alumni were on hand to support seven teams of 31 participating Lindner graduate students.

“All shared in the triumph of the winning team,” Dwyer says. “They combined analytical savvy, strategic thinking, professional polish and teamwork to win. I’m really proud of their effort.”

The two-round competition offers graduate students a unique opportunity to act as members of their own investment banking firm and address a fictitious business scenario for a dose of real-world experience in analysis and strategy.

Team captain O’Keeffe says the competition is a powerful experience. “The most significant impact of the experience was how this competition demands that a team take the sum of everything learned throughout the program and apply it to a real-world, high-pressure business scenario,” he says.

This year’s case involved the valuation and strategy for acquiring a privately held business that sold high-end German autos through dealerships in California and Germany.

Competing teams then pitch their solution to a panel of judges, who determine which firm should be “hired."