Media Releases

“Manulife: Entry Into Asia Challenge” finalists announced

April 24, 2013

Competition hosted by U of T’s Rotman School of Management

TORONTO, ON – Man­ulife Finan­cial is pleased to announce the teams named as final­ists in its Man­ulife: Entry into Asia Chal­lenge. A dis­tin­guished pan­el of inde­pen­dent judges reviewed 46 entries, sub­mit­ted by teams of uni­ver­si­ty busi­ness school stu­dents from across Cana­da, and has select­ed the sev­en teams of final­ists.

The sev­en teams will now present their sub­mis­sions to an elite pan­el of judges with the win­ners of the com­pe­ti­tion being announced on May 22.

“The Man­ulife: Entry into Asia Chal­lenge” asked under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate busi­ness school stu­dents at Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ties to cre­ate a busi­ness plan for a Cana­di­an small or medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs) to expand into any coun­try in Asia. Com­pet­ing teams will demon­strate their abil­i­ty to think strate­gi­cal­ly about entry into Asian mar­kets while demon­strat­ing their under­stand­ing of the unique attrib­ut­es, chal­lenges and real­i­ties fac­ing Cana­di­an SMEs.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is man­ag­ing this one-time only com­pe­ti­tion. Addi­tion­al details on the com­pe­ti­tion are avail­able at www.manulife.com/asiachallenge.

The final­ist teams rep­re­sent the Uni­ver­si­ty of Regi­na, the Richard Ivey School of Busi­ness, Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario, the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo.

The team mem­bers are:

BETA TAU
Tim Philip, Kira Novak and Bar­ton Soro­ka
Coun­try for entry: Chi­na

CRESCO
James Ham­mond, Alex Apanovitch, Geoff Calder and John­ny Kim
Coun­try for entry: Chi­na

FRONTIER CONSULTING
Ian Sin, Ryan Appo­tive, Meli­ta Cyril and Leslie Wong
Coun­try for entry: Myan­mar

HYDROLOGIC SOLUTIONS
William Cheng, Erol Biceroglu, Miran­da Fong and Maris­sa Leung
Coun­try for entry: Chi­na

LUMI STRATEGISTS
Jie­mi Gao and Kevin Zhou
Coun­try for entry: Chi­na

NEW HORIZONS
Aisha Bukhari, Lak Chin­ta, Peter Cinat and Aris­to­tle Solomon
Coun­try for entry: Japan

SENOSENSE
Mut­thu Jagdish Ram­lingh, Selvin Jebaraj, Dar­ryl Karpel and Ron­ak Soni
Coun­try for entry: India

Man­ulife would also like to extend their sin­cer­est thank you and appre­ci­a­tion to the judges who reviewed the 46 sub­mis­sions and chose the sev­en final­ists.

The judges were:

Danielle Gold­farb, Asso­ciate Direc­tor, Glob­al Com­merce Cen­tre, Con­fer­ence Board of Cana­da;

Mark Healy, Man­ag­ing Part­ner, Torque Con­sult­ing Group;

Stephen Young, Research Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow; as well as

A. Rebec­ca Reu­ber is Pro­fes­sor of Strate­gic Man­age­ment at the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and act­ed as Fac­ul­ty Advi­sor to the Com­pe­ti­tion.

About Man­ulife Finan­cial

Man­ulife Finan­cial is a lead­ing Cana­da-based finan­cial ser­vices group with prin­ci­pal oper­a­tions in Asia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. Clients look to Man­ulife for strong, reli­able, trust­wor­thy and for­ward-think­ing solu­tions for their most sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial deci­sions. Our inter­na­tion­al net­work of employ­ees, agents and dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ners offers finan­cial pro­tec­tion and wealth man­age­ment prod­ucts and ser­vices to mil­lions of clients. We also pro­vide asset man­age­ment ser­vices to insti­tu­tion­al cus­tomers. Funds under man­age­ment by Man­ulife Finan­cial and its sub­sidiaries were C$532 bil­lion (US$535 bil­lion) as at Decem­ber 31, 2012. The Com­pa­ny oper­ates as Man­ulife Finan­cial in Cana­da and Asia and pri­mar­i­ly as John Han­cock in the Unit­ed States.

Man­ulife Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion trades as ‘MFC’ on the TSX, NYSE and PSE, and under ‘945’ on the SEHK. Man­ulife Finan­cial can be found on the Inter­net at manulife.com.

About the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure that Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool