News News!

….. Latest and as it happens …Only on Kapil Newsline some gist:

1. Dhar is finally getting married ….yeyeye! But too bad I will not be present for his wedding! Damn!

2. Iyer is shifting houses and her copy writing skills have gone down to the extent that she takes one week to review a one page document
3. I got a call from ATK for second round of interviews
4. Third diary post due shortly on the MBS Website.

Cheers
KL

Surprise!

Well today was a sweet and sour surprise. I opened my Inbox to find mails from my friends in India saying “Kapil Lalwani in ET” and I thought may be this is the April Fool being played early. But then I slowly discover that this is not a joke but truth.

On 30 Jan 2006, Economic Times in India published a special feature on International Management Education and in this they featured an article on Indian students doing MBA abroad. They nicked (I am assuming as I did not give them) quote and a photo from my student diary on MBS website and used it in the article.

I have uploaded a scanned copy of the article here. If you want to read the original 1016 X 1548 version of the scanned article then click here.

Sleazy buggers EcoTimes people but then I guess I do not have enough reason to complain as long as they say slightly nice things about me or even neutral thoughts for that matter!

Cheers
KL

Need some sleep!

Yeah, that’s what I have been thinking about since ….. well, since the start of this semester I guess. Life has only grown more chaotic with companies visiting campus, applications for internships, networking events and what not. To add to this we have a long list of submissions this semester including presentations and reports.

Just got done with PMO class presentation and M&A Ranking document, phew! More to come, 2 PMO workshop presentations, strategy presentation, operations management poster, M&A negotiations, M&A justification document and exams! Holy Fish!

Investment Banking Society as MBS recently organized a networking event in London, an informal meeting platform for our alumni, faculty and current students. Event had a decent turnout of alumni from various banks! AT Kearney and Exxon shortlisted people for interviews …. all the best guys!

Need to chalk out something for March, before Sheetal kills me we have one week of holidays. Scotland, Skiing, Nowhere? I will try and figure it out by mid Feb.

Adios
KL

AT Kearney Global Prize photo …

…is here! Check out the photo on AT Kearney website:

http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=2,1,6,10

Second photo from top in the European finalists section.

Cheers
KL

Diary Posts

Excerpt from my diary post on MBS website:

The time was passing by quickly as we realised the autumn term was around the corner with loads of learning on the way. Reminds me of a quote by Carol Bishop: Bittersweet October - The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.

Read the full post here: http://www.mbs.ac.uk/mbs-people/mba-diary/

The matter on the diary comes more or less from my thoughts here on this blog. Another diary posting: http://www.mbs.ac.uk/mbs-people/mba-diary/kapil-lalwani-2.htm

Cheers
KL

Happy Holidays ….

Holidays are here! Well I have eaten almost half of them already without even burping! They are flying away folks more action when I am back in Jan.

Till then all have a nice Christmas and a very happy New Year!

Cheers
KL

A T Kearney Global Prize Competition

There are a host of competitions in which MBS participates but some of them have a long association with the school and “A T Kearney Global Prize” is one of them. The competition involves analyzing a case study, role-play interviews with AT Kearney consultants and a final round of presentation to a panel of judges. Fourteen teams participated from the schools and one team represented the school in European Finals in London and I was a member of this winning team. Although Cranfield won the European finals this time, but it was a great learning experience for the entire team.

Repentance et al

Well the guilt of not having written for sooooooooo long! I know … I know there has been a lot happening here in Manchester. Academics and non-academics …… so much of it. I cannot believe that I am through with my corporate finance and marketing assignment and still alive don’t worry it was not that bad! Lot of courses changes happened over the last few weeks as we flow down to macro eco from micro eco and to management accounting from financial accounting.

Celebrated the Diwali night with the entire class and it was quite nice to see everybody in a totally different form with their hair down and dancing on Indian bhangra tune! Heather pointed out that girls from our class can make it to Bollywood and well, I would say even the guys weren’t too far behind!

I attended the AMBA dinner and best student award presentation in London just a couple of days back with Vasanthi and other members from school and it was good fun. Typical English black tie event, although it was a first time experience for me.

An aside - Synergy Consulting (our team) won the ATK Global prize from our school and will be competing with other European school in London on 26th Nov.

More later
Cheers
KL

Life is a project

Well the time from my last post makes me realize the number of things I have been juggling for a while! Not that I will not be doing it anymore …. just makes me wonder how people stretch out of their comfort zones to cope with the increasing amount of tasks!

Although we have a few courses this term including Marketing, Macro/Mico Economics, Fin Accounting, Corp Finance but all this brings with it a huge amount of group work which is really time consuming Understanding the dynamics of an international group and making it work efficiently to achieve a certain task is a key factor of good time management during your course.

We have a Corporate Restructuring Project this term which I feel is the best course this term. Its the stuff that I want to do … it brings together learning from various courses and industry knowledge in the form of a project. We have to study a huge UK PLC in detail and suggest a possible acquisition / divestment strategy after studying various available targets. The course will be evaluated not only based on the reports you submit but it also includes the negotiations you do with company management (role played by faculty) to get the deal through and to sell your suggestion. It is real good stuff!

Plan to go down to London this weekend to meet Baniya this weekend! Time to get back to the Micro Eco class now
Cheers
KL

The French Connection ….

Well today I will talk about our marketing prof and one of my colleagues, and well the connection they share is that they are absolutely crazily good in one of the things they do.

This guy who teaches us marketing is called Pete Naude, he has moved between Manchester and Bath during his lifetime and he has done immense amount of good work publishing papers as you can see from the link. He is equally impressive in the class with everything in command and some rules that he dictates. For a moment it felt like being in high school again, it felt as if you were being taught by a man from prehistoric times with principles as hard as the Stonehenge but then as the class progressed you come to know that he is a very cool man.

During the class he said “Exams are no good. I do not want to listen to the stuff that I have taught you.” - impressive stuff man! And stems from this is the basis of the assessment of our marketing course - completely done on case studies. Believe me this is one of the ways in which MBS makes you practice what you learn.

Other part of this connection is a colleague of mine called Lucian. He is one of the funniest man I have ever met. People having good sense of humor can be categorized based on different factors like empathizing with the audience quickly and changing your joke, witty “one-liner” production depertment, “I am Mr Sarcastic, how do you do?”, timing of the remark etc. With Lucian its not so much about his jokes or one liners as it is about the timing. He is accurate to a micro second when he passed a comment and for a moment it seems as if it was the funniest remark that could be made in such a situation and people would burst out laughing.

In one of the instances in the class, profy was talking about marketing various things including experiences and he said that watching ManU play @ Old Trafford is an experience of its own and he went on to say how he is a not a gr8 ManU fan but he would still go there for the experience bit. That’s when Lucian points to him and says softly, “How did you manage to get this job?”, everyone was rolling on the floor (metaphorical) including the professor.

Time to hit the sack folks! Sayonara ….

Cheers
KL