Charles WONG and Ricky CHAN, Year 3 students of Risk Management & Business Intelligence (RMBI) Program, won the Champion of the Business Sustainability & Risk Management Case Analysis Competition 2016 organized by The Association of International Accountants (AIA) – Hong Kong Branch. 

The competition has invited nominations from universities of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Participating teams were given a case study of a garment and textile trading company with the front office in Hong Kong and the factory in China. For this labour intensive and heavily polluting industry, each team was required to prepare the reporting materials which were ready for integrating into the Sustainability Report according to the standard of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 on the following standard disclosures:

• GRI G4 Indicator G4-2 : Description of key impacts, risks, and opportunities

• GRI G4 Indicator G4-EC5 : Wage Allocation

• GRI G4 Indicators G4-EN8 and G4-EN10 Water

• GRI G4 Indicator G4-LA1 : Employment   

Charles and Ricky, nominated by RMBI program, were very proud of representing RMBI and HKUST to join the competition although the report preparation clashed with their examination period. They applied what they have leant from RMBI, such as data mining, compliance tools, extrapolation and scaling, to analyze the case and come up with solutions to improve the risk management, retention and recruitment policy, and also the environmental policy and work procedures.     

Their outstanding report earned the entry of final round to compete with another 15 teams of finalists.  Each team presented their reports to a panel of judges consisted of industry professionals.

“It offered us a good motivation to understand China more and learn about the business environment; industrial and environmental law, regulations and compliance; and the National 12th Five-Year Plan.” Ricky said.   

Charles added that, “The competition further sharpened our presentation and communication skills, especially at the Q&A session when we needed to give a real time response to the queries raised by the judges.”

In the report, they suggested providing workers with clearer promotion pathway, commission plus fixed salary and also better welfare to enhance the work efficiency. They also proposed to carry out a refinement project on the sewage treatment plant to meet the standard set out by environmental protection law of China and reduce the water usage cost. They believed that solutions which are mutually beneficial to business, people and environment would be the key to sustainable and profitable business.

Beside cash prize, Charles and Ricky will be offered an interview of summer internship at GCA Professional Services Group, a global financial company.  Wish them good luck!