IIM Alumni meet in London
Press Release
 

I hope more Bollywood films to be shot in Wales: Welsh minister

Addressing an audience of 200 business delegates at the second annual full day IIM Global Management summit in London on October 4, 2007, Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy First Minister for Wales and Minister for Economy & Transport, along with his team from International Business Wales announced that a trade mission from his country would be visiting India in November 2007. Wyn Jones said this was an ideal way for business in Wales to find new partners and customers and develop cultural links between the two countries. He said Wales was a small but a smart country with a "Will Do" attitude that offered potential partners, good infrastructure, good workforce, stable economy and low interest rates – adding he hoped to see more Bollywood films being shot in his country.

The IIM Global Management Summit - The Changing Face of Business - was held at New Connaught Rooms by the Europe Chapter of Alumni Association of the six Indian Institutes of Management. The Summit was attended by over 200 delegates from the business, political and academic worlds.

Opening the summit earlier, Mehmood Khan, chairman of IIM Alumni Association Europe, said the event was an opportunity to stimulate business discussion and global networking, and to promote the global brand of the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), India's world class b-schools from where around 100 MBA graduates are being directly recruited into the City of London every year.

The Summit heard from 35 keynote speakers and industry specialists, and held panel discussions in several areas. Harpal Randhawa, Founder of Sabre Capital worldwide pointed that global companies from emerging markets are successful due to their superior execution and new industry models rather than cheap labour, giving examples of companies ranging from Posco in Korea and Yue Yuen in Taiwan to Embraer in Brazil and Tenaris in Argentina. He surprised the audience by asserting that the next global cement giant is in the making in Nigeria, a place which the world assumes is still too risky for business.

Several other speakers focused on key innovations and growth areas. Amjid Ali, Head of HSBC Amanah UK, explained the global potential and policies behind Islamic Banking.  Martin Kochman, Head of Europe BPO at Cognizant gave examples of clinical trial, equity research and fund accounting as future areas of smaller-scale higher-value processes that will be outsourced.

The conference spanned business areas of current interest. Underscoring the business challenges of climate change, Mark Purdy, Policy & Corporate Affairs, Accenture, presented some key findings of his forthcoming research report. The research interviewed management at 500 companies of various sizes across six countries, and identified that although over 45% of them see it as a major issue for business, fewer than 20% have made it their strategic priority.

Professor David Begg, Principal Imperial College London however pointed out that action on climate change is not straightforward because it requires not only a compromise between poor and rich nations, but also between current and future generations. As future generations will be richer and will have better technology to deal with these problems, he said, so we should not be making poor people poorer today just to make the rich richer tomorrow.

Bob Gogel, Group CEO of Liberata, challenged the audience to balance corporate social responsibility with shareholder value maximization; while Joel Perlman of Copal Partners, an equity research KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) company, had some surprising news when he said it is cheaper to have Western senior management expats in India than senior local recruits because of the insatiable demand for talent in the rapidly growing Indian market.

Mark Berrisford-Smith, Senior Economist at HSBC Bank plc had some positive news to give saying that while the US economy will see a slowdown in 2008, yet a full blown recession was unlikely.

Talking about "Distributed Innovation", Prof. Gerry George, Head of Rajiv Gandhi Centure at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, emphasized the special relationship with IIMs. Giving examples of the Guggenheim museum, Heathrow Terminal 5, and City Hall design process, he emphasized that global partnerships are likely to drive value innovation in the future.

Clifford De Souza, Partner at Emerging Markets Group, identified systemic factors at the root of the ongoing US sub-prime crisis predicting further financial innovations will emerge for better risk transfer.

Other key speakers included A. S. Lakshminarayanan, Country Head of Tata Consultancy Services, UK & Ireland; Nish Kotecha of Sphere Partners and President TiE UK; Uday Dandvate, CEO SonicRim, Ltd; and Pradeep Banerji, CTO of the Sword group.

Lauding the efforts of their Europe alumni, Dr. Devi Singh, Director of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, pledged greater support from all six IIMs for future events. The IIM Alumni Association Europe announced they will hold more business and cultural events in London in 2008 to further build their network and promote the IIM brand.

Ends

Notes to the Editor
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1. India shining

Growth of India over the last decade has been remarkable. Some statistics to emphasise India's global reach follows below.

- India is the 2nd largest investor in to London. More than £52bn has been invested by Indian companies alone into London last year.

- While an "emerging market", India is already world's 4th largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity terms.

- Though India and China (now collectively referred to as Chindia) are mentioned in as the emerging Asian superpowers, India's growth is largely powered by domestic consumption, whereas in China the growth is driven by exports and investments.

- Out of the 4 BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) nations who are to become superpowers by 2050, India has the distinction of being the easiest amongst them to do business with. Factors that are in favour of India vis-à-vis other BRIC nations are it being the largest democracy, most advanced financial systems, business encouraging legal system, opening economy and most importantly, easy availability of English speaking populace trained in various skills.

2. Brand IIM

The Indian Institutes of Management are a group of 6 globally respected institutes that shape management practices in India and abroad by creating new frontiers of knowledge and developing ethical, dependable, entrepreneurial, and socially sensitive leader-managers committed to excellence. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1961 was created as an autonomous body with the active collaboration of the Government and industry. The Institute had initial collaboration with Harvard Business School. This collaboration greatly influenced the Institute's approach to education. Gradually it emerged as a confluence of the best of Eastern and Western values. The model was quickly replicated in the other five institutes tucked in different corners of the Indian subcontinent.

Some salient points that stand when we think of IIMs include

• IIM A is the only Indian B-School to be included in The Economist's list of top 100 B-schools in the world.
• Has been rated by The Economist as 'The toughest b-school in the world to get into'.
• It has been consistently rated as one of the Top 3 B-Schools in Asia-Pacific.
• More than 200,000 graduates vie every year for an entry into one of these institutes and only about 2000 (1%) clear the 3 phased selection process.
• IIMs have been the preferred recruitment destination for top recruiters across the world.
• The IIMs have 100% placement within 2-3 days consistently with each participant taking away 3-4 of the choicest offers.
• Though initially constrained due to the closed nature of the Indian economy prior to the reforms era, with the opening up of the Indian economy in the 1990s and with thousands of alumni placed in important positions in the top companies and locations all over the world, the IIM alumni network is now rapidly enhancing the influence and reputation of the Indian Institutes of Management on the global business scene like the IITians have done in the field of technology. We have over 700 alumni in Europe and more than 1500 in the USA as a testimony to this.
• Some of our illustrious alumni include Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo MD & CEO), Vindi Banga (Unilever Director), K. V. Kamath (ICICI Bank CEO), Kishore Chaukar (Tata MD),  Prof Aswath Damodaran (Stern School - leading Finance guru), Ajay  Banga (Citigroup - global head of Consumer business), Ivan Menezes (CEO, Diageo North America), Raghuram Rajan (ex. IMF chief economist) etc.

3. IIM Alumni Association Europe (http://www.iimeurope.org/)

IIM Alumni Association Europe represents over 700 alumni of India's leading business schools - the six Indian Institutes of Management. IIMs are premier institutions imparting high quality management education, offering Post Graduate and Doctoral level programs, Executive Training Programs and engaged in Research and consulting activities in India. The Alumni Association represents over 700 alumni of India's leading business schools who are based out of Europe. There are similar chapters in the Americas, Middle East & Africa, East Asia and Australasia. IIM Europe is the culmination of over 6 years of efforts made by the alumni bodies of individual institutions to bring the alumni within Europe together. Our alumni hold key management positions in the world's most successful companies across sectors such as HSBC, IBM, Citigroup, General Electric, Unilever, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, P&G, Arcelor Mittal, Barclays Bank, HP, UBS, Siemens, JP Morgan, Nestle, Deutsche Bank, Boston Consulting, Credit Suisse, Microsoft, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley ,Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Capgemini, Cognizant, Satyam and others.

-- For more details on the conference, the speakers and photos
Contact: Priya Sivaraman on 0790 224 1095, priyats@iim-alumni.org
 

Source: By E-mail (October 9, 2007)

published on IndianMBA.com on October 10, 2007

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