The Finance Club 'Harmony'

The Finance Club “Harmony” started by hosting an event on the 8th of October, 2021 at 2:00 PM. The event was organized to provide financial knowledge through the use of a case study depicting the challenges faced by the Douglas Lumber Company. The case depicted that the company was going through a cash crunch despite its profitable operations. It even went for financing its short-term needs through raising debt from banks. Lastly, the company was faced with the difficult choice of raising loans from two banks offering different specifications.

The students were required to determine why the company was short on cash despite profitable operations thus to develop a clear and important distinction between profit and cash requirement. The case also aimed at assessing the financial analysis skills of the students by asking them to evaluate the loan requirements of the company. Lastly, the students were required to explore the effectiveness of proceeding with expanding level of operations despite enormous financial constraints such policy would place on the company.

The competition pitted five teams against one another. The teams were evaluated on three parameters namely, the overall quality of comprehension of the case, the quality of the solutions provided with regards to the questions posed, and the presentation quality of the case solutions. The teams were given time of two days to comprehend the case and submit the solutions to the judges a day before the presentations. On the final day, the teams were required to present the case and the solutions in front of the judges and the audience within the specified time limit.

The event began with a brief description by Dr Danish Hussain, followed by Nidhi Singh’s announcement of the judges. As difficult as it seemed, only a few groups were able to handle it, but just a few couldn’t. Dr Vaishali Jain and Prof Mohit Boralkar were the respected panelists and they continued with the question-and-answer round, where a set of challenging questions were presented to the teams, such as why the company’s owner chose a 90-day note and whether the financing decisions made by the company’s owner can be considered a bad choice. The panelists, then, explained about alternate sources of funding and the students learned a variety of finance topics such as how rediscounting from a discount house or any financial institution can be a solution, and how adding retained earnings can help a firm revive. Finally, the judges provided insightful remarks to each team, highlighting what was lacking in their analysis and what were the main strengths while they presented their investigation. The winner of the competition was Team 4, consisting of six members named Amal Xavier, Alen S Kokkatu, Anson Thomas, Sanju Jose, Shyam Jose, Sebin Thomas The event came to a close with an elaborate speech appreciating the finance students’ performances and a vote of gratitude.