Bringing home the gold medal

A local Macau team has brought home the top trophy from the 34th Global Management Challenge (GMC) International Finals. The Dean of the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), Lin Zhijun, believes the victory should be an incentive for the city to place “more value” on business management education.
The international finals of the world’s largest strategic management competition, held between April 10 and April 12 in the capital of Qatar, saw a team from the MSAR come out victorious for the second time, after the city’s first victory at the 2007 edition held in Romania.
The team representing Macau, nicknamed ‘twilight’, comprised of four students from MUST, who won the regional finals from among 111 teams in January.
“The last time Macau won this competition was 10 years ago, by a team composed of MUST students and local business representatives … This is a worldwide competition with teams coming from 23 countries and a final [with] eight teams. I believe this award will give some prestige to Macau’s business education and the quality of the city’s business students,” Mr. Lin told Business Daily.
The team from Russia – winners of the last year’s GMC International Finals held in Macau – only managed to achieve second place this time, followed by a team from Mainland China in third.
Established in 1980 by Portuguese simulator and model company SDG, in partnership with the weekly Portuguese newspaper Expresso, the GMC tournament places participating teams in charge of a simulated company to manage different aspects of a simulated business environment.
The teams have to make management decisions based on a simulated company history and the world’s financial situation in the preceding five years.
Since the founding of the competition, Portugal, having won eight editions of the GMC, is the country with the largest number of wins under its belt, followed by Mainland China and Russia, both with five wins, and Spain with four wins.