Category Archives: 24 To 25 Minutes With…

When we decided to sit down with a current student for 24 to 25 Minutes with…, we wanted to sit down with an individual who could give a unique and well informed perspective about what it’s like to be an MBA student in today’s world.  We wanted someone who could describe first hand the challenges graduate management students face in today’s market.  And, we wanted someone who could set a positive tone for those students who will follow in his/her footsteps.  The Zicklin School of Business is very fortunate to have many students who fit this description.  Dave Sedelnick is most certainly one of them.

A second-year Full-time Honors MBA student, Mr. Sedelnick came to Zicklin with a strong resume in real estate finance and development.  A year before starting his MBA, Mr. Sedelnick had an epiphany while on a trip to China.  In his own words, he was “awed by the rapidity at which the real estate industry is broadening, deepening, and globalizing.” He realized at that moment that his long-term goal would be to manage commercial real estate projects in the developing world.  In order to achieve that goal, Mr. Sedelnick identified the need to improve upon his analytical, technical, and managerial skills sets and chose the Zicklin School of Business to help him in doing so.  Mr. Sedelnick, as a result, left a very successful career in Massachusetts and headed to New York City for his MBA.  The following is his story….

Q. You started your MBA in the first week of September of 2008.  Within two weeks, the world as we knew it would change forever.  How have the events of September 2008 and the ensuing financial crisis/recession shaped your management education experience?

 A. For me, the biggest change was from a job search perspective.  I went to school to study finance and before classes were underway the financial world seemed to be in the midst of self-destruct. Massive layoffs, government bailouts and bankrupt financial institutions made finding an internship exceptionally challenging. Since the typical job search mediums were constrained a change in job-search strategy was required.

 The financial crisis also effected our MBA education, particularly for finance classes. Frequently, professors would diverge from a typical ‘scheduled’ lecture, to discuss significant events and provide explanations. We talked about what was happening in the financial markets and what that meant for us as MBA students.  We also discussed new opportunities (such as risk management) that were going to emerge from the financial crisis. 

 Q.  Let’s delve a little deeper into changes in your job search strategy.  How did it change as a result of the events?

 A. Coming into the Baruch MBA program, I thought that a job-search would be the least of my worries. I was in the real estate industry prior to coming to school and had several high-level contacts in the NYC area.  For example, my prior boss had referred me to one of his longstanding friends at a commercial mezzanine finance company. I had met with the CEO several times prior to attending grad school, and more-or-less had an open offer when I graduated. How that changed. Stressed by the real estate downturn, and just six months into my MBA education, his firm was forced to close its doors. All the contacts I thought I had either went sour or instituted a no-hiring policy.

 Essentially, I was at square zero. So, I had to reach out of the box and pursue a different strategy. That started with a lot of networking. Instead of relying on my existing database of names, I was forced to, in a good way, reach out to different people, including professors.  After a lot of hard work, my lucky break came along when I spoke to Professor Terry Martell, who, in a round about way, acquainted me with the CEO of the firm I’ll be working for after graduation; a mid-sized investment bank called Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW). I wasn’t really prepared for that.  I thought that a job out of school was going to be pretty much sealed up and it wasn’t.

 Q. In your admissions essay, you stated your ultimate long-term goal is to manage commercial real estate projects in the developing world.  How has that goal evolved over the last 18 months?

 A. Well, my ultimate long-term goal hasn’t changed — it’s still where I’d like to be down the road. Prior to grad school I had the experience of traveling to China. Seeing the changes taking place in this developing economy solidified my interest in emerging markets.  The pace at which the changes were happening was just amazing.  Buildings were going up over night.  There are night crews working on buildings. The sense of urgency was just incredible. My post-graduate career path in real estate banking will be immensely helpful in building a strong analytical skill set and laying a foundation in real estate capital markets.

 Q. What ideas, areas of interest, opportunities have you pursued over the last 18 months that you either did not consider prior to starting your MBA or did not know existed?

 A. One of the most beneficial parts of my education that I wasn’t expecting was the different types of case competitions that are available.  For example, I participated in the ACG Cup this year, which is a private equity M&A case competition. Fortunately, my team won the first round and we will be competing in the state-level competition in late April.  It’s been a fantastic experience in itself.  Competitions like this build on everything you learned in an MBA curriculum. It was a lot of work; but you get a lot out of it and it has been something I really enjoyed.

 Q. Let’s talk a bit more about your ACG Cup experience.  Your team won the campus based competition – congratulations.  Describe the overall experience, how you built your team, and what set your presentation apart from the competition.  And, secondly, what are your predictions for the next round?

 A. I’ll start with the second question.  The next round is state wide.  My team will be competing against six other business schools, including NYU, Fordham, Cornell, Hofstra and a few others.  I believe Baruch came in third place last year. This year I’m ready to raise the bar and I can definitely see a first place finish for us.  But if we place second, I won’t be horribly upset, but I’d really like to be at the top of the podium. We’ve done a lot to prepare for the second round.  We met with several of the judges after the first round to get advice as to how to change our presentation and what to focus on. We have gone through a couple of practice rounds since then. So, I think with this kind of preparation, we will be ready to take a shot at 1^st place.

Dave Sedelnick (center) Celebrates ACG Cup Victory with His Team

In regards to forming the group, as you are aware, the Zicklin School of Business is one of the most diverse schools of business in the country so it was a unique opportunity to build a team. No matter who you pick for teammates, you’ll be assured of not having two people who are alike or two with a similar set of experiences.

 I started the team by recruiting two of my classmates, both of whom I’ve built a close relationship with during my time at Zicklin. Oytun Sepin, a student from Turkey who is studying Finance and International Business and Yuri Prokhorov, a student who was born in Russia and is studying Finance. Our group was assigned two additional students from the Flextime MBA Program, however neither were able to participate in the competition.

 Once the case was assigned we had a week to prepare. We decided beforehand that we were going to give it 110% and that’s exactly what we did. I think we took first place in the competition because we drew on our diverse experiences, leveraged our MBA education, and gave 110%.

 Q. So, aside from preparation and effort, what do you feel set your presentation apart?  Give us a critique of your performance?

 A. As I mentioned before, the competition builds on just about everything one learns in business school.  We had to sit down, work together, and come up with a plan for a fictional private company that was looking to transition ownership.  First, we leveraged our finance classes to develop a strategic alternatives model for the firm that addressed all of the stakeholders’ interests. Once we developed that plan, we had to decide how we were going to present it to the panel of judges, who represented the board of directors and senior management of the private company. Building on our marketing and business communication classes, we crafted a presentation and communication plan that effectively addressed management’s concerns. We rehearsed the presentation until it was second nature.

 Overall, I think our performance was solid, though we did make one mistake in our analysis that nearly cost us the win. Somehow an Excel formula error slipped past all of us and as a result our valuation was too high. But our team compensated for that error in several ways. First, we were the only team, as far as I know, to propose a partial LBO for one of the owners of the firm. The case indicated that this particular owner was interested in retaining ownership and possibly running the company. We built out a model for that owner’s pro forma estimates and while we concluded that it wasn’t the best alternative for the company, I think the judges were impressed that we took the time to explore the avenue. Also, we were prepared for several of the judges’ questions. While a few questions tripped us up, overall, we anticipated the majority of questions that were posed. So when one of those questions popped up we were able to spout off an explanation and answer as if it was second nature.

 In the end, I think we were able to edge out the win because overall we had a solid presentation. We clearly explained and justified our methodology while presenting and were careful to address management’s concerns in a consultative manner.

 Q. You come to Zicklin from Massachusetts.  What advantages/disadvantages are there in doing your management education in New York City?  How have you personally taken advantage of the city?

 A. I don’t see any disadvantages to pursuing my MBA in New York. Of course my family and some close friends are further away then I would like; but from an academic standpoint, I think New York City is the best possible location for an MBA education.

 Unfortunately, I think sometimes students take for granted that they are in New York. We get many offers to attend national conferences that are being held in New York.  Students from all over the country and abroad make plans to attend these events. For us, it’s simply a matter of waking up in the morning and jumping on the subway. Also, the networking opportunities have been unbelievable here in New York. Being right in the heart of finance has opened so many opportunities for networking events, industry conferences, speaker series, etc.

 Q. What conferences/networking events have you personally taken advantage of?

 A. I have taken advantage of several. The first was a private equity/venture capital conference that I learned about through Professor Terry Martell. It was at this conference where I first met several employees of the company I will be working for when I finish my MBA. I was able to make a significant number of contacts at this conference – I walked out of there with at least a dozen business cards.

 A common consensus in Massachusetts is that New Yorkers are a bit more pretentious, and focused solely on pursuing their own livelihood. I’ve found the exact opposite. While there are always exceptions, for the most part, everyone I have encountered, including C-level executives, have been more than happy to entertain a phone call or an informational interview. Sure, sometimes business people are busy and you may not get on their schedule for two-to-three weeks, but usually they are more than happy to talk about how they got to where they are, discuss career goals and help shape a career strategy. In fact, out of the dozen business cards I walked away with from the private equity conference, I have kept in touch with three-to-four people and have had informational interviews with about six or seven. And that’s just one example. I’ve been to several other events and have had similar success at each, including the REIT Symposium.

 Q.  You are on the verge of graduating.  What recommendations would you give to an individual who is on the verge of starting his/her graduate management education?

 A. My first recommendation would be to have as much fun as you can right now.  You are five months away from a lot of work.  Especially the first term – it’s intensive and you’ll be forced to prioritize school seven days a week. That will be a big change from the ‘standard’ work week many are used to. There’s no doubt that it’s difficult to get back into the “school mode” and an MBA education is very competitive. Not just within classes but also with other schools. It’s collaborative too, but it is very competitive. If you have time, it can’t hurt to brush up on current events, and maybe get a head start on any topics you may not have had experience with.  But other than that, kick back, relax, take it easy and prepare yourself for the hard work ahead of you.

 Q. Looking back, what would you have done differently?

 A. One thing that I should have done differently is to take on a more active role in clubs.  I helped out with the Finance Club here and there but I think I should have branched out a little more and stepped out of the ‘real estate and finance’ box to look at more of the diverse number of clubs/events that Baruch offers.

 Q. So, what’s next?  What does your life look like after May 30^th?

 A. After May 30^th, unfortunately things do not end for me as I will still be studying for the CFA Level I on June 5^th.  After the 5^th, however, it’s party-hardy for about a month until work starts on July 7^th.  I’ll be working in investment banking, so it’ll be a lot of hours, but I’m prepared. As I mentioned, I interned at the firm I’ll be working for over last summer and enjoyed the experience immensely. To me, investment banking is very similar to business school. I worked in a small entrepreneurial group, everyone was intelligent, the culture was very competitive yet collaborative and everyone was willing to put in the extra time/effort to get the job done. That’s exactly the kind of environment I want to work in, so I am very excited.

 Q. How would you say that internship experience affected your second year?

 A. There is a specific standard that investment banks expect and that standard is perfection.  If anything is wrong in what you submit, you are in a world of trouble.  You quickly learn to have an extraordinary attention to detail. That level of detail has helped me in my second year of school.  When I work on projects or valuations, I have a greater attention to detail. On a higher level, the internship also helped me to see that everything I was putting into my education would be realized ten-fold when I graduated.

 Q. Finally, tell us about your classmates.  What is it like doing an MBA in a close knit cohort like the Full-time Honors MBA?

 A. I wouldn’t trade the Full-time Honors cohort for anything; it’s been one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had in business school. The best things about the program are the caliber of student and the group diversity. Sometimes it can be difficult – it’s a love/hate relationship at times, especially when there are deadlines.  But getting a diverse group of viewpoints – things I would not otherwise have thought of myself – was key to what has made this experience so great. Many of the relationships that I’ve developed with fellow classmates will last well-beyond grad school. The cohort atmosphere in the Full-time Honors program completely met my expectations.

 Lightening Round 

1. Text Book that you will never depart with?  The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities; Frank Fabozzi

2. Most admired business person? Warren Buffet & George Soros. For different reasons; I can’t choose just one.

3. Daily/Weekly/Monthly you cannot live without?  The Economist

4. Spring Break destination? No Plans Yet; Hopefully Someplace Tropical

5. Course that challenged you the most?  Probability Theory

6. Last non-school related book you read?  A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

7. Favorite Baruch-area eatery?  Latin Thing http://www.latinthingnyc.com/

8. Favorite Baruch-area watering hole? Copper Door http://copperdoortavern.com/

9. What is your golden rule? Give 110%; Always Keep Looking Forward; Believe What You Can Achieve and Go For It.

10.  Who will win the World Cup?  Brazil will make their comeback

Looking back, didn’t the 1990s seem so boring in comparison to the 2000s? Ok, the 1990s had the fall of the Soviet Union, the emergence of the World Wide Web, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the impeachment of a U.S. President, and, of course, O.J. Simpson. But, let’s face it, some of those stories would have trouble competing for front page real estate with the news events of this past decade. It would be difficult to find a decade that has been filled with stories with such wide sweeping global impact. Perhaps, the only one to come close in the last 100 years is the 1930’s, a decade that has been compared repeatedly to the 2000s.

Over 6,200 military personnel hailing from 33 nations, including 5,306 from the U.S., have lost their lives fighting in military operations on two separate fronts in the last 10 years. Terrorism has rocked major cities like New York, London, Washington DC, Madrid, and Mumbai. Tsunamis, of different sorts, have swept away small coastal towns and major global financial markets. No wonder Time Magazine calls the 2000s the Decade from Hell.

When we asked the Zicklin community to list the five most significant news events that define the decade in business, some responded with, “Are you kidding…five?” We knew it would be a daunting task. So, we decided not to be sticklers.

The following are the lists of five (plus) stories that members of the Zicklin community believe define the decade in business.

Seth Lipner, Faculty of Law

1. The Credit Mess: Wall Street brought us to near collapse of the economy in 2008.
2. The Tech Wreck: Corrupt auditors, money-hungry executives and phony Wall Street analysts crash stock market
3. The Madoff Ponzi Scheme: The rich got fleeced as the SEC ignored the signs of fraud
4. The Rise of Wireless Internet: Everyone gets a blackberry
5. The End of the Tiger Woods brand

Hugo Nurnberg, Faculty of Accountancy and Taxation
1. The pay czar restricting executive compensation
2. Obama’s election
3. Pending passage of health care legislation
4. General Motors’ bankruptcy
5. Madoff Ponzi scheme
6. SEC moves toward International Financial Reporting Standards
7. Europe adopts the Euro
8. U.S. dollar falls in half relative to the Euro
9. Hi-tech bubble bursts
10. Subprime mortgage market crashes
11. China emerges as the third largest economy
12. World Trade Center attack
13. U.S. topples Taliban regime in Afghanistan
14. U.S topples Iraqi regime

Regine Goldberg, Director of Student Life

1. The Euro becomes legal tender in twelve European Union countries in 2002. It is the largest monetary union in history. The Euro eases trade in the Eurozone. By 2009, four more countries join the Euro, Slovenia in 2007, Malta and Cyprus in 2008 and Slovakia in 2009.
2. Bernie Madoff… One man’s powerful scheme has ruined the lives of thousands. Where were the regulators? Who was watching?
3. Major downturn in the value of dot-com shares, with occasional exceptions (Google’s IPO on August 13, 2004). The Internet itself continues to grow as a business and advertising medium, with steady increases in online shopping and banking activities. Other successful firms include Amazon.com and eBay.
4. Enron and other major accounting and corporate governance scandals prompt reviews of corporate government legislation worldwide (eg Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
5. The collapse of the American housing market caused difficulty for the two mortgage brokers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been subject to fears of collapse.

Donald Vredenburgh, Professor of Management

1. The 2008-2009 recession has wrought major societal impact. The securitization of subprime mortgages into collateral debt obligations and the extensive use of swap derivatives led to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and the TARP bailout. The recession necessitated a large government stimulus bill and included a substantial housing market downturn and rise in unemployment. Consumer financial protection government regulation will likely ensue, as will more extensive regulation of large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, and increased deficits and accumulated debt will bring long run fiscal policy consequences.
2. The Bush 2000 election and 9-11 defined the decade to a considerable extent. Tax decreases and lessened governmental regulation shaped the economic culture, while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars largely determined international affairs for the US. The unfunded Medicare prescription drug plan constituted a major social policy change with fiscal policy implications. A healthy economy falling into a recession and international disapprobation brought in Obama a marked change in government policy orientation.
3. Constituting one sixth of the US economy, health care significantly affects growth and employment. The health care reform that unfolds will influence business decisions and fiscal policy for many years, particularly given increasing life spans and the baby boom generation size.
4. The Enron et al. scandals, followed by the Madoff Ponzi scheme, fostered perceptions of egregiously poor business ethics. The Sarbanes – Oxley law resulted.
5. At the risk of exaggerating the importance of current events, business observers cannot fail to note the enlarged scope of an environmental sensibility. International concern has spread beyond activists to business persons, and economic opportunities are emerging.

Robert Blau, Faculty of Statistics

1. 9/11 was a world-changing event. Its impact was far reaching in lots of areas (e.g. political, economic, social,).
2. Sarbanes-Oxley had subtle impacts. (E.g. some business went overseas, fear of over-regulation led to lack of regulation elsewhere,)
3. The rise of China may be the most significant of them all from a long-term perspective; it is just too difficult to know at this time.
4. Nothing need be said about the near-collapse of the world-wide financial system. But it is possible that this will have predominantly a short-term impact (and then fade away into history).
5. A similar comment can be made about the GM debacle; perhaps it is just short-term.

Fran Murphy, Director of Graduate Admissions

1. 9 – 11 – World Trade Center Disaster
2. Collapse of Lehman Brothers
3. Dow loses 50% from it’s all time high (10/07 – 13930; 2/09 – 7062)
4. Enron
5. Rise of technology & social media

Thank you to those in the Zicklin community who participated in today’s survey. Tomorrow, we will be looking at the five innovations/ideas that define the decade.

For the second installment of Lexington 24:25’s series “24-to-25 Minutes with…” we sit down with Professor Don Schepers.  When we met with Professor Schepers,  whose areas of expertise include Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Ethical Decision Making, it was our intention to discuss the changing graduate management education landscape, his role as Director of the Zicklin Center for Corporate Accountability, and his efforts in developing a new MBA in Sustainability.  However, as our conversation took place on the eve of the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we couldn’t help but throw a question in about that as well. 
The following is the transcript from Lexington 24:25’s 24-to-25 Minutes with… Professor Don Schepers.

Q. Graduate management education, and the MBA in particular, has been criticized widely during the financial crisis.  What, if anything, should business schools be doing differently?

A. That’s a very difficult question to answer.  On the one hand, many business schools have instituted programs in ethics. As one of the miscreants said – this is Walt Pavlo who was indicted for embezzling $6million from WorldCom –he said that MBA schools tend to train little terriers.  When students come out of MBA schools they are like little terriers.  They just nip and nip away; they are tenacious.  We want good, aggressive, tenacious students.  At the same time we also need students who have a really strong moral fiber and say this wrong, or this needs to be fixed or this is something I can’t do. There is a program I started using this year called Giving Voice to Values.  It hits at some of those issues.  The assumption is that most of the students who go to business school want to do the right thing.  What they often don’t know when they are confronted with something other than the right thing is how do you answer.  How do you raise objections without getting fired? This program is intended to help students learn and practice a bit.  Specifically, how do I say something when I really need to object on an ethical basis?  I think those are the kinds of programs that we are going to see more of in business schools today.  They really address some of those core issues.  You are never going to stop having people like Bernie Madoff or any of the other Ponzi schemes and insider trading or any of those things.  What we can do is give the more tools to those people who want to do the right thing. That’s the tack that business schools really need to focus on.

Q. You have been at Baruch College Zicklin School of Business for over ten years now.  How would you describe the change in MBA students you have witnessed over that ten-year period?

A. I think there was a big kick point when Enron happened.  For the first couple of years I was here – from 1999 to 2001 – it was almost an apology for teaching ethics.  Once Enron happened, I didn’t need to apologize for teaching it any more.  Students needed to know it, they knew they needed to know it.  So, we got about the business of what we really needed to learn and what we needed to do in the business community. I think in the last three years, there has been another turn and that is in the area of sustainability. Students are much more focused on what needs to be done in order to make the business community a more sustainable community, to make business a more sustainable enterprise.  The immediate focus is about our environment, but the deeper focus is about social issues.  Those are much more difficult issues to get a hold of and to put into a sustainable business plan. 

Q. Many schools are adopting curriculum with a focus in sustainability.  Students have demonstrated an increased interest in the area. Clubs like Net Impact have become incredibly popular.  Students participate in sustainable case competitions and sustainable entrepreneurial ventures.  For students who are devoting such a great deal of their curricular and co-curricular attention to sustainability, what career opportunities do you see as becoming available?

A. What we at Zicklin are trying to do with the MBA in Sustainable Business is to provide opportunity for a double major.  I think the career opportunities are not yet there for somebody who is solely focused on sustainability and I don’t know that they ever will get there.  I don’t have that crystal ball.  We do now have people who are corporate responsibility officers, who are corporate ethics officers.  Nobody 10 years ago – actually 15 years ago because 10 years ago those positions started coming into existence – but in a 15-year span those specializations have grown.  So, will there be sustainability officers?  I don’t know.  My guess is at this point that the entry point for most of our students is going to be an accounting major who knows how to deal with sustainability on the accounting balance sheet; that’s going to get somebody a job.  It’s the same for finance; it’s the same for marketing; it’s the same for operations.  Operations managers who have supply chain responsibilities, if they come out with a sustainability side to their degree, they are going to be a prized commodity because business today is very much looking at the question of how it is we push these values down the supply chain.  I can’t buy something and say its carbon foot print is “this” if the carbon foot print of my subcontractor is twice what mine is.  All of that has to get wrapped into a product.  When we look at the carbon footprint of a product, we have to look at the whole thing. 

Q.  You have an incredibly diverse background (please see bio below).  How does your background affect your teaching and scholarship?

A. For one, I have always valued teaching.  That is at the core.  And, I think the theology and the divinity degree, there has been a lot of philosophy in my background.  That gives me a basis to talk about the ethical issues, to deal with the ethical issues on a substantive level.  So, that informs my work with the Business & Society materials. 

In regards to scholarship, I have done a little bit of work with the philosophy side of my background.  I really have not gone too much into that.  It was a part of my original research when I was looking at individual decision making.  That was very much based on philosophy.  Now that I look more at the corporate side, there’s a little less philosophy at that level.  There is more of a strategic orientation.

Q.  The Mission Statement of the Zicklin Center for Corporate Accountability reads, “resolving conflicting corporate stakeholder interests.”  What does the Center mean by that exactly, and what does it do in that regard?

A. Conflicting stakeholder interest occurs anytime that you have two people looking at the same pile of money.  Employees want to get paid more; board members don’t want to give, they want to take care of shareholders.  You need to balance out all of the needs of all of the stakeholders.  Customers want quality for their money.  So, everybody has a piece of the pie here.  What we do, and this is actually occurring today, we are having an audit conference for the practitioners in the area and there is a great deal of conversation about Fair Value Accounting.  That’s a core issue for protecting the shareholders.  So, making sure that those kinds of events take place, educating our students on the different issues, that is what our core mission is.  We have an event on Monday night about scandals.  We had an event about campaign contributions.  What we do is try to run events that typically can’t be run in the classroom, but that give our students and others an exposure to a broader set of materials and broader discussion about the current events in the business community.  That’s what really needs to take place.  We need to get more people involved, more discussion going and when we have these discussions, we need to point people in specific directions that we can do some research on and that we can make some policy around – so that the next generation, who will still have problems, won’t have the same problems. 

Q.  What is your vision for the future of the Center?

A. I think there is going to be a couple of things.  We are certainly planning on continuing the level of activity that we currently have going at this point in time.  I think the expansion that we are going to see is two-fold.  One, I think we will look much more heavily at the corporate governance area.   We are looking very seriously at how we do that and how we can do it better. We are discovering the real issues we need to deal with there, perhaps even going into the area of corporate governance education for directors.  The second area is beginning a more structured research program.  There are a number of people in the school who are starting to look at the different sides of sustainability and how that impacts finance, how it impacts accounting.  We want to start doing research programs that address those issues.  If that demand really builds, we would want to be the place for them to come and discuss those kinds of research programs. 

Professor Don Schepers

Q.

  The leaders of the world are about to converge on Copenhagen to tackle climate change?  In your opinion, what needs to take place in Copenhagen for the conference to be considered a success? 

A. I think that is a very hard question because in the minds of many people it is just not going to be successful.  Success would have been predicated on reaching some sort of binding agreements.  And at this point I think what we are seeing is a discussion that is at best agreeing to what will be further discussed.  That is about as good as it’s going to get I think.  Some people are talking about reducing carbon emissions  – the total amount of carbon emissions.  Others are talking about – and this is particularly from the developing countries – emission intensity, which is the amount of emissions per GDP.  So as their GDP ramps up, they can actually emit much, much more carbon.  That is not the same set of goals as saying, “let’s reduce carbon emissions, period.”  Europe is very much in favor of the absolute reduction; the U.S. wavers back and forth; China is very much in favor of talking about emission intensity.  Even to just continue having the discussion is going to be one of the major outcomes of that meeting.  For many people it’s a very disappointing set of outcomes.  But given the nature of the discussion and the real complexity of what’s being discussed, that’s probably as good as it’s going to get. 

One of the more interesting issues will be the politics of it.  President Obama shows up at the beginning of the conference but most of the other heavyweights show up at the end because that’s when the agreement starts to get hammered out.[editor’s note: the day following our interview, President Obama announced he would be showing up towards the end of the conference]  What he leaves in his wake will be very important and whether those representing the U.S. at that point have the power to do anything is going to be an interesting set of issues.  It’s not so much a science issue at this point as it is a political issue.  That will be one of the most interesting perspectives at this point: what will the politics look like at the end of the day. 

Lightning Round

Time Person of the Year?  Teddy Kennedy

Company that best represents corporate accountability? Johnson & Johnson

Best case study used to demonstrate corporate accountability? Heineken in Africa

Daily/weekly/monthly you cannot live without?  The Economist

Favorite vacation destination? Florence

Carbon Trading or Carbon Tax?  Carbon Trading

Highland/Lowland/Speyside/Islay? Single Malt is really good enough

Book on your bedside stand?  Justice by Michael Sandel

If you weren’t a professor at Baruch, what would you be?  Working as an ethics officer

World Cup 2010 Champion? I don’t follow the World Cup.  I’ll have to ask my brother-in-law

Professor Don Schepers Biography

Professor Schepers was appointed Director of the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity in July 2009.  He is Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York.  Professor Schepers has taught business strategy at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and social and governmental environment of business at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive education levels.  His field of specialization is business ethics, and the intersection of business, government, and society.

Prior to his Ph.D., he taught high school science and mathematics, and was President of the Marianist Retreat and Conference Center, a small non-profit conference center outside St. Louis, Missouri.  He holds an M.B.A. from Tulane University, a Masters of Divinity from St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, University of Toronto, and a Masters of Science in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Arizona.

Professor Schepers has published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Business and Society Review, Business and Society, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management Review, and Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management.  He also has numerous cases and book chapters to his credit.  He is a member of the Society of Business Ethics, the Academy of Management, the Eastern Academy of Management, the International Society for Business, Economics and Ethics, and the International Association of Business and Society. 

Important Links:

Zicklin Center for Corporate Accountability: http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/centers/cci/

Welcome to the interview series 24 to 25 Minutes With…  These interviews are meant to provide an understanding of the positions that members of the Zicklin community hold on the pressing issues of the day, as well as the issues’ relationships to graduate management education.

To kick off the series, Lexington 24:25 sat down with Professor Terry Martell.  As a longstanding member of the Economics and Finance faculty, Chair of the Zicklin Graduate Curriculum Committee, Director of the Weissman Center for International Business, President of the Faculty Senate, and faithful fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Professor Martell is perfectly suited to speak for 24 to 25 minutes about the financial crisis and its effects on management education.

The following is the transcript from our conversation.

Q. Zicklin’s mission is to create and disseminate knowledge and to promote ethical business practices while capitalizing on the school’s diversity, our excellent teaching, and our NYC location.  Zicklin accomplishes this by delivering top quality MBA and other Master’s level programs, supporting scholarly research, and service to the community.  What, if anything, will change in our academic programs, scholarship generation, and service as a result of last September?

A. Well by the 4^th Quarter I assume you mean the financial meltdown and the consequences associated therewith.  I have thought about this a great deal and I am not sure there is a heck of a lot we ought to be doing from a curriculum perspective with the issues related to the fourth quarter of ’08.  Where do I see a need in developing graduate education?  Perhaps a better understanding of risk management at the 5,000 foot level. The question is not what’s the right distribution to model the tail of events but, rather, simplify questions, ones that have been raised for years before the blowup, for example the relationship between the risk on the balance sheet and the way we compensate senior managers.  I think that is a discussion for an HR kind of track but also a discussion for general managers who need to understand how behavior and compensation interact to produce results that were not necessarily fully understood.

At Zicklin, we don’t allow a course through the curriculum without an explicit treatment of ethics, whether it be in the context of Statistics, CIS, Finance, Marketing, etc.  So, students should be exposed to ethical thinking and how that impacts business decisions.  Beyond that, I am not sure that any fundamental changes in the curriculum are required.

Q. What about in terms of scholarly activities?

Other than policy issues, like what’s the appropriate relationship between capital structure and compensation, I don’t see the events of last year generating the kinds of scholarship that I traditionally think of as associated with the Zicklin faculty.  Our research tends to be empirically based.  I haven’t seen much of that as of yet. Where you would see it is in the corporate governance literature, the interaction between corporate governance and finance.

Q. And in terms of service to the community?

Is it clear that people didn’t understand credit? It looks like no one understood credit.  I think that an executive program that dealt with risk issues would be quite useful, and to take a look at some of the unintended consequences of some of the regulatory proposals also would be helpful.  An appropriately structured executive education course in that area would be incredibly useful.  Risk management is part of management and managers cannot be overwhelmed by the details.  I chair a risk management committee that deals with credit default swaps – some of the things that almost took down AIG and certainly affected Lehman.  We sit and talk about mean absolute deviation, and what is the appropriate distribution of capital – that’s all useful important information, but I fear that managers, who do not have that statistical background tend to shy away from that discussion.  There are some basic issues that any risk manager will contend with on a proposal that you do not need to be a statistician to ask thoughtful questions about.  A short-term executive program dealing with those issues would be helpful to the business community.

Terry Martell, Professor of Economics and Finance

Q. I have heard you describe the crisis as an agency issue.  Please elaborate.

A. If you look back 20 years many of the firms that got into trouble – Bear Stearns, Lehman – these firms had more of a partner culture than a stockholder culture.  We did not fully appreciate that change from a partnership organization to an equity driven organization would significantly increase a firm’s appetite for risk.

One of the reasons I think that Goldman came through this better than most is that they retained a greater degree of this partnership culture.  They kept this idea of sharing in the overall success of the firm to the degree that other firms did not.  What that means is you are not playing with other peoples’ money; you are playing with my money. If it is my money at risk, I am going to be much more conscience of what the downside may be.  So keeping this partnership mentality is useful from a risk management perspective because it keeps people more in check.

Q. You lead the Mitsui Lunchtime Series.  Have there been any speakers in the last year who have spoken about direct experience with the crisis?

A. We had here last year the lead director for Bear Stearns came in to speak and he said, “Every model that we ran, we survived.  We ran the Crash of ’29 scenario.  We ran the Crash of ’87 scenario.  We ran all the scenarios.  We didn’t run the scenario where billions of dollars of our funds went out the door in a week.  Nobody can withstand that.”  Having said that, Peter Kellogg – this is 3^rd hand – sold Speer Leeds and Kellogg to Goldman because he said that the day the market stops lending us over night money is the day we are out of business.  We fund this billion dollar portfolio in the repo market every night.  The day someone says no, that’s the day that all of our jobs are gone.  So, he sold that firm because he understood that while he had a great business, the Achilles heel of that business was his ability to get short-term financing.  Bear was a much more sophisticated firm than Spear was, but they did not fully appreciate how quickly credit lines could disappear.

How long will we remember this?  I don’t know.  We had another Mitsui speaker come in last year – Todd Petzel who ran a hedge fund. He refused to invest in high risk instruments which ultimately blew up.  However, initially, he did not perform as well as other money managers.  So, Todd’s money left him to more “exciting opportunities” and Todd found another job.  Was he right?  Yes.  Was he out of work?  Yes.  So, how do you balance all of that?  Are people smarter today than they were a year ago?  I hope so.

Q. Which brings me to the next question: have we already forgotten the lessons learned?

If you fix the compensation problem – and don’t get me wrong, I don’t support a compensation czar, but this is where I think the Boards have to step to the plate.  Public Company boards are well compensated.  As a board member, you can have an easy life or a hard life.  You can raise difficult questions or you can sit through a two-hour meeting and go and have drinks with the chairman.  How you exercise your responsibility is your choice.  But, if the board is doing its job appropriately, then it balances the form of compensation to encourage longer term performance.

Q. Leadership is central to management education.  At Zicklin, we run a monthly Leadership Lecture Series.  If you were to look at the best examples of leadership over the last year, how would that be defined?  And if there is an individual that embodies that level of leadership, who would it be?

A. I don’t know how we define leadership.  Do we define leadership in terms of success for stockholders?  If that is the definition, then you think about someone like John Thain, who has been raked over the coals over a stupid decision about how he outfitted his office, but managed to sell Merrill Lynch at substantially above what it was probably worth when he sold it.

I don’t see obvious heroes here that I would put out for public accolades.  I see a lot of people who worked extraordinarily hard to keep firms together and funds together.  Some successful – some not.  I am hopeful that the liquidity crisis that we face will teach everyone a significant lesson.  I am more concerned about the over reaction.  If the credit markets don’t thaw up a bit, we are going to see another very serious problem as this stimulus money comes out of the economy.

Q. What is future for regulation?  Will we ever achieve global regulation?  Or will there be more regulatory arbitrage on the horizon?

A. Everyone wants enough regulation so that people have confidence in your market.  I am not optimistic we are going to see a global regulatory structure.  If we even had a global coordinating committee that could act in a reasonably consistent manner, then that would be a step in the right direction.  Let’s take for example a financial transactions tax and let’s put the cities in the game.  You have London, New York, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and then lesser places.  All that has to happen is for one of them to say no and all we’ll have to do is restructure the whole business and the business will take place out of wherever the financial transaction tax is lowest.  People are already setting up in Singapore in anticipation of what’s likely to happen here in the United States.  My worry is that we create a comparative advantage for another capital market and that clearly isn’t good for us.

Do we need regulation?  Obviously.  We have Basel II which is supposedly a worldwide capital requirement for the large banks.  Did it help the large banks?  If it did, I missed it.  Clearly there is going to be some regulatory changes but is Washington really going to solve this problem?  I doubt it.

Lightning Round

Time Person of the Year? Steve Jobs

2025: Dollar or Renminbi? Dollar

FT or WSJ? WSJ

College football Champion? Alabama

What book is on your bed stand? Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers

Don Draper or Henry Francis? Who?

Bordeaux or Piemonte? Bordeaux

Best Central Banker? Ben Bernanke.  In 2009 anyway. He could be the worst in 2010.

V/U/W/L? L

2010 World Cup Champion? Brazil

Terrence Martell, Phd

Terrence F. Martell is the Director of the Weissman Center for International Business at Baruch College/CUNY where he is also the Saxe Distinguished Professor of Finance. As Director, he oversees a myriad of international programs and projects. He received his BA in Economics from Iona College and his Ph.D. in Finance from the Pennsylvania State University.

His particular area of expertise is international commodity markets. He teaches and conducts research in this area. He is a Director of the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) which is listed on the NYSE. He serves on the Audit Committee of ICE. He is Vice Chair of ICE Futures U.S., the domestic regulated futures exchange of ICE. He is Chairman of  ICE Clear US. He is a director of ICE Trust US which clears credit default swaps. He is chair of the Risk Committee for ICE Trust. He serves as a board member of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Chamber. He is a trustee of the PSC/CUNY Welfare Fund which manages health benefits for the employees of the City University of New York. He serves on the Audit Committee of the Fund. He is a member of the New York City District Export Council of the US Department of Commerce. He is Chair of the Baruch Faculty Senate. He serves on the CUNY Board of Trustees Committees on Fiscal Affairs, Investments and Audits.

A resident of Pelham, New York, he served as President of the Pelham School Board and the United Way of Pelham. He is married to Rita Simpson and they have three children Kathryn, Laura and Alex.

Welcome to Lexington 24:25.  This blog is meant to serve the Baruch College Zicklin School of Business Graduate Program Community.  From the 2600 graduate students, to the 185 full-time faculty, to the 200+ adjunct faculty, to the tens of thousands alumni, to our corporate partners, the Zicklin community is one that serves New York City and the world.  

Given that Zicklin is a community that actively embraces a mission of teaching, scholarship, and service, it is impossible to chronicle everything that goes on here on a regular basis.  But, we’ll do the best we can.

So, in the weeks, months, and hopefully years to come, this blog will regularly highlight the scholarly activities of our faculty.  We will address the curricular changes that are being made and that need to be made.  We will feature the unique opportunities our students are exploring.  And we will discuss the needs of our external partners and society in general – the needs that business schools everywhere should be addressing – ones that we hope to address at Zicklin.

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