After placing sixth in a national accounting corporationPricewaterhouseCoopers’ competition last year, a team of LSUstudents again will be competing against the best of the best.
The 2004 xACT competition is an “extreme accounting”case competition the company began last year to attract topaccounting students from 30 universities nationwide.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the largest accounting firms inthe world, said Barbara Apostolou, head of the UniversityDepartment of Accounting. The competition is a good networkingopportunity for both students and the accounting firm, shesaid.
“There are so many more jobs available thanstudents,” Apostolou said. “They want to court thesestudents and familiarize themselves with them.”
Thirty-five students from LSU divided into seven teams to tacklea “real-life” accounting problem. The teams had twoweeks to develop a financial plan for a fictional country,Panadrevia. The University selected a winning team, and the teamsubmitted a video to the company to select five finalist teams. Thefive teams will present their projects in New York City and receive$10,000 to split among the teammates.
According to the competition’s rules, the teams mustpresent a plan to convince the Panadrevian government that fairmarket value strategy, which takes a company’s entirefinancial portfolio into consideration, reflects the best image ofa company. The government would create a rule that any businesslocated in the country would have to use the national winningteam’s strategy.
The teams had to present their plans to the “queen”of Panadrevia and other Panadrevian officials, who really werepartners of the PricewaterhouseCoopers firm dressed in regal attire– crowns, powdered wigs and all.
The 2004 winning team, “The Producers Too,” won $200each. Apostolou said last year’s winning team found out theywon sixth place in nationals during finals week last year. Veteranteam members Sanaz Aghazadeh, team captain and an accountingsenior, Bonnie Dye, an accounting senior and Colton Fontenot, anaccounting junior, used their knowledge from the previous year toguide the group. Mattie Pourciau and Daniel Fontenot, bothaccounting sophomores, are the other members of the team. Apostolouis the team’s faculty adviser.
The team based their strategy on an analogy comparing fairmarket strategy to a mirror, and compared different types ofmirrors to the strategy.
Colton Fontenot presented a “rearview mirror”outlook, saying the strategy is similar to a rearview mirror inthat it looks back at the past. The fair market strategy includespast and present financial information, not simply thecompany’s current financial situation.
Daniel Fontenot appealed to the queen and compared the fairmarket strategy to a “full-length mirror,” asking herif she looks in a full-length mirror to see herself entirely whenshe gets ready for a public appearance.
“Even if we hadn’t won, it was definitely worthit,” Pourciau said. “I learned about accounting in thereal world. As a sophomore, I got to see if I really did likeaccounting.”
Aghazadeh said her experience from last year gave her adifferent perspective on this year’s project.
“Just having the experience of last year, we knew what toexpect,” Aghazadeh said. “We had higher goals, and wewanted to push ourselves further to try to go to NewYork.”
Aghazadeh said Apostolou and other accounting faculty membershelped the team contact professionals to mentor them with theirpresentation.
“This time, I think we jumped way out of the box,”Aghazadeh said. “I never would have thought we could contactthe chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board [RobertHerz].”
Aghazadeh said the team asked Herz for his opinion about theirproposal, and he gave them feedback in a phone interview.
Aghazadeh said she interned at PricewaterhouseCoopers in NewYork City this summer, and she will work for the company aftergraduating next semester.
“It just looked good [on my resume],” Aghazadeh saidabout last year’s competition. “They saw what I wascapable of. It answers the question: Can I go outside of theclassroom and apply my knowledge in the real world?”