U of T Engineering students Tarek El Fedawy (IndE 1T3 + PEY), Kazem Kutob (IndE 1T3 + PEY), Layan Kutob (IndE 1T2 + PEY) and Huda Idrees (IndE 1T2 + PEY) recently took second place at the Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club’s Case Competition.

This is the second consecutive year that they’ve beaten out teams from top universities including Yale, University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers.

The competition took place at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the top business schools in North America and the world. Participants were judged by major sponsoring firms including Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Accenture and Mars & Co.

Teams were required to formulate a strategic blueprint for a post-merger of two wealth-management firms. Their strategy would have to overcome significant operational complexities, and would allow the firm to regain its position as a leader in the wealth-management industry.

The U of T Engineering team proposed strategies that involved IT restructuring, re-aligning business and technology assets and operations, as well as organizational change management.

“It’s an incredible opportunity to compete against some of the world’s most respected universities and to be judged by top-tier consultants,” said team member Kazem Kutob. “We take great pride in repeating our second-place finish. And we greatly appreciate the education, support and exposure we receive here at U of T Engineering, which plays an important role in making this win possible.”

“On behalf of the Faculty, I would like to congratulate the team for their continued success in this competition,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “Strong business acumen is quickly becoming a highly sought after and essential skill for today’s engineers. The team’s second-place win is a testament to the quality of our industrial engineering program and the Professional Experience Year (PEY) program, which gives our students a chance to apply their engineering skills to the world’s most complex problems.”