Wharton Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008

Home

Wharton Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008

Wharton Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008 The Wharton School is the business school of University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was established in 1881 through a donation of Joseph Wharton, making it the world’s first collegiate business school.

In conjunction with the other schools and colleagues of the university, Wharton grants B.S., MBA, offers a Ph.D. program, and holds several diploma programs. With the most electives of any business school[citation needed], Wharton offers concentrations in Accounting, Business and Public Policy, Entrepreneurial Management, Environmental Management, Finance, Health Care Systems, Human Resource and Organizational Management, Insurance and Risk Management, Legal Studies and Business Ethics, Management, Marketing, Multinational Management, Operations and Information Management, Real Estate, Retailing, Statistics and Strategic Management.

Since the 1990s, the popular and financial press has consistently ranked Wharton as one of the world's top institutions for business education. Moreover, it has been ranked the best business school in the world by the Financial Times in every year in which the newspaper has ranked business schools, except for 2005, when it tied with Harvard Business School. Wharton usually receives the highest reputation scores from academics and recruiters.

The school has over 300 faculty members, translating to an 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio. The school claims that its faculty are the world’s most published and most cited among business schools[citation needed]. Research published in the peer-reviewed Academy of Management journal ranked Wharton as top institution in the simultaneous pursuit of scholarly achievements and excellence in teaching. Most recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education rated Wharton's Marketing and Management departments as the first and second in the world for research productivity, respectively.

The admissions process at Wharton is highly selective — it is one of the most competitive business schools in the U.S. A high GPA, high GMAT score, and very strong non-quantitative credentials are typically prerequisites to admission.

The School publishes an influential[citation needed] on-line journal, Knowledge@Wharton, that is "the envy of every other school", and a newly established publishing house Wharton School Publishing. Wharton maintains the world's largest[citation needed] financial, economics, management, marketing, and public policy data warehouses accessible through state-of-the-art web-based data management services, called WRDS.

(From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

View Wharton Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008

The New World Order
Across the world, companies in emerging markets are acquiring assets in the U.S., Western Europe, and other developed markets. What does it all mean?

A World of Perspective
Wharton’s Mauro Guillén on thriving in emerging economies.

Tales from the Trenches
Catching up with Wharton Business Plan Competition winners.

Download Wharton Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008

PDF format, 3.4MB, 42Pages.

The New World Order
By Steve Rosenbush

Across the world, companies in emerging markets are acquiring assets in the U.S., Western Europe, and other developed markets. What does it all mean?

Just three years ago, IBM was known for making some of the most coveted laptops in the world. The sleek, black ThinkPad, with its fold-out keyboard, was a status symbol in corporate conference rooms and on the business class section of airplanes.

That’s why it was so surprising to some in 2005 when the U.S. tech giant sold its PC business for $1.75 billion to a relatively obscure Chinese computer maker called Lenovo. Big Western corporations had come to view China and other parts of the developing world as low-cost sources of manufacturing and labor. But suddenly a young company from an emerging market was looking to play a vastly different role, using strategic M&A to carve out a position of global leadership. Lenovo even promised to open a self-styled Innovation Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., a sign that the company intended to lead on a global scale.

Such deals, where a multinational corporation or investment fund in an emerging market acquires assets in the U.S., Western Europe, and other developed markets, have accelerated sharply during the last year, and are becoming larger than ever. Consider the following:

    * In January, Chinese metal producer Shenzhen Zhongjin offered to pay $4.4 billion for Australian miner Herald Resources.
    * India’s Tata Group in February announced a $1 billion takeover of U.S.-based General Chemical Properties Inc.
    * Brazilian mining company CVRD in November closed an $18.7 billion acquisition of Canadian mining company Inca Ltd.
    * Mexican cement giant Cemex last July closed a $16.7 billion acquisition of Australian construction company Rinker.
    * Saudi investment fund SABIC last May acquired GE’s GE Plastics business for $11.6 billion, while OAO MMC Norilsk Nickle Group of Russia bought LionOre Mining International Ltd. of Canada for $6.3 billion.

Wharton alumni from across the globe are involved in every aspect of this new direction in cross-border M&A. Some are heads of companies making bids for U.S. and European businesses, while others are working, post-merger, to integrate operating divisions with very different cultures and styles. Others are assisting from the sidelines as consultants.

“It’s a really big phenomenon. And I think it’s going to change the global economy,” says Mauro F. Guillén, the Dr. Felix Zandman Professor in International Management and director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies. ...