Second Place Gained in the NZ Secondary Schools Business Case Competition

A Macleans College team, represented by Hayley Xie (Upham House), Kieran Bettesworth (Kupe), Elizabeth Koh (Upham) and Ricky Wang (Kupe), placed second in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Case Competition.

The New Zealand Secondary Schools Case Competition, run by Auckland University of Technology, is an annual national business case competition. With numerous teams nationwide participating in the preliminary round, the group battled their way through to the finals, where they competed with three other top teams.

Throughout the competition, teams were required to apply their business analytics skills to a real-life case and propose comprehensive strategies under time pressure. This year, the preliminary round case was on Icebreaker, a NZ merino clothing company. Working with limited information, the team cracked the case to formulate a plausible solution, which included in-depth financial projections.

In the finals, teams were given the gruelling case of Bunnings NZ, which was particularly complex given the competitiveness of its market. With only a few hours to prepare their case, the Macleans team narrowly lost first place to a team from Auckland International College. Impressed with the team’s comprehensive strategies, the judges highly commended the group’s proposal as well as their teamwork.

The team was awarded the second place trophy as well as a cash prize of $600.

The team would like to thank Mrs Ladkoo and Mr Caley for their support.