A team made up of ESADE students has won the ‘Oliver Wyman Iberia Case Competition’ (OWICC), a highly prestigious event amongst strategic consultants to tackle the challenge of solving a real business case, organised by Oliver Wyman last November in Madrid.

More than 1,000 students in 216 teams, hailing from 27 universities and representing 8 nationalities, participated in the most recent edition of the competition, in which ESADE had the most entrants of all the participating universities, sending a total of 62 groups. Additionally, two of the teams to reach the final round were made up of MSc students from ESADE, and the group consisting of Sebastian Oelighoff, Fee Gunkel, Jan Hendrik Wawers and Bernard Carl Andreas Schmid won the competition.

The teams competed to solve new cases involving real companies. According to Olaya García-Lancha, director of MSc programmes at ESADE, ‘The Oliver Wyman Iberia Case Competition poses a business problem that replicates a market situation that students will encounter when they graduate, giving them a specific amount of time to solve it. Participating in these types of challenges is thus a great opportunity to stimulate real-time teaching.’ She continued, ‘This kind of case competition is also an incredible learning opportunity for students at several other levels, as it emphasises the development of skills such as critical thinking or analytics, which are essential in the business world.’

ESADE student Sebastian Oelighoff explained, ‘In the final round, each team had four hours to solve a case in which Amazon was considering making the leap to online banking because its competitors had recently entered the fintech sector. The case required developing a strategy in a southern European pilot country and analysing its viability.’ For Oelighoff, the experience was very positive. ‘Competing against the most talented students in Europe is very challenging’, he said, ‘but the chance to exchange ideas and lessons learnt with them was invaluable.’

As a prize, the winning ESADE students will receive a trip to an Oliver Wyman office in Europe, with the option of interviewing and joining the recruiting process for future consultant positions at the firm.