4th Annual Oxford Private Equity Forum, Said Business School

January 18, 2008: WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, Valendar, Germany. The student body organizes their Campus for Finance. At the event I meet an MBA student from Said Business School Oxford University, Sebastian Wilde. He explains to me that the students at Oxford Business School organize a yearly
Private Equity Forum in April. He invites me to collaborate with the WSJE Future Leadership Institute. I end up sponsoring the event with copies and attention in my daily educational box in the newspaper. It is for the first time I see the box work like it was intended to work. In the upper part of the box I can highlight a seminar that perfectly fits the goal of the WSJE Future Leadership Institute, i.e. bridging university and industry, and in the below part I can publish the logo of Vlerick Business School as supporters of our Future Leadership Program. The box looks great.

About the event: Again I am so fortunate to be able to attend such events. My blood itches in my veins when I see students put together a quality event. It reminds me of my days at University. The audience (275) could listen to some very good speakers in the Nelson Mandela Lecture Hall, one of them Khaled Said, son of Mr. Said who gave his name to the Oxford Business School. There were only 2 sponsors, Deloitte and The Wall Street Journal Europe, both of which received a sufficient amount of attention and exposure. All details were being taken care of. The synergy between the WSJE brand and the Said Business School brand is so obvious when you look back at this event.

Oxford versus Cambridge: Saturday April 7, 2007: 4.30PM

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been battling against each other on the water since March 12, 1829. Two students, 1 studying at Cambridge, Charles Merival, and the other one, Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth) studying at Oxford, challenged each other to row four-and-a-quarter miles on the river Thames. The race became known as the Henley Royal Regatta (although the students abandoned Henley for London for their second encounter).

Some highlights :

- Wins: Oxford : 73 wins - Cambridge : 78 wins - One dead heat in 1877

- Oxford has won four of the last five encounters

- Course record: 16.19 mins (Cambridge in 1998)

- Sinkings: Three (Cambridge in 1859 and 1978, Oxford in 1925)

- 1829: First race

- 1856: First annual race

- 1912: Both crews sank - a few weeks before the Titanic

- 1924-36: Cambridge win a record 13 in a row

- 1954: 100th Boat Race

- 1976-85: Oxford win 10 in a row

- 1984: Cambridge boat sinks after ramming a barge before even under starter's orders

- 1987-92: Oxford make it 16 wins in 17 years

• Each year, the loser of the previous year's event challenges the winner to a new race.
• In the early years of the Boat Race, the crews wore no distinguishing colours.
  However, in 1836 Oxford selected dark blue , the colour of their stroke-man's college (Christ Church), and Cambridge adopted the "duck egg blue" of Eton.
• Seven million people in the UK are expected to watch the race on television, worldwide more than 500 million people will follow the race.
• In 1981 Sue Brown became the first woman to participate in the Boat Race (cox).
• Three time Olympic gold medal winner Matthew Pinsent rowed for Oxford in 1990, 1991 and 1993.
• In the history of the race there has been one dead heat. "Honest John" Phelps, the judge on the finish, was asleep under a bush as the crews arrived. When awakened and asked the result, he said "Dead heat to Oxford by four feet"
  

Oxford won the 152nd Boat Race in 2006

Oxford

Oxford, (OMEC meetings). A few impressions.

Saïd Business School (SBS)
First big building leaving the train station at Oxford. SBS is the business school of the University of Oxford. After a gift of £20 million from Wafic Saïd in 1996 the former 'University of Oxford School of Management' became the Saïd Business School. (The gift was contested by Oxford students at the opening of the new building in 2001 - after an extra donation of £3 million for constructing the building-. The students claim Saïds fortune comes from questionable armaments deals between UK and Saudi Arabia.)
The MBA programme ranked 20th worldwide and 2nd in the UK in the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings 2006.

Wafic Riad Saïd
A Syrian businessman(1939) who became a multi-millionaire working for the Saudi Royal Family as a consultant in the fields of infrastructure and armaments projects.

Saïd Business School entrance

Dining hall, Trinity College
One of the smaller (ca. 300 students) of the 39 colleges at Oxford admitting students for degree courses (1555).

Student house at Trinity College, rowing team.

English breakfast, while contemplating the idea of building a future leadership academy or institute out of OMEC

Christ Church
A unique institute with a dual function. On the one hand it is one of the largest colleges in the University of Oxford. On the other hand it is also the church for the Diocese of Oxford. The Cathedral still follows the old Oxford Time which is five minutes west of Greenwich. (6 p.m. Oxford time is 6.05 p.m. GMT). Every day at '6' the Cathedral Choir will sing in the church.