Banking and Finance

Never have I ever climbed a mountain peak. As a child, I imagined myself conducting expeditions in deep-frozen pathways, leading amateur explorers to the top of the world, and instructing rookies in surviving harsh blizzards. Even though slightly altered, my childhood dream has been achieved. I led a team of fellow classmates, in my Strategic Management course, to the success summit of a financial competition. Over the course of a semester, I and my teammates were supposed to create and manage a company of the IT industry, in a computer-simulated environment, along with other four rival teams. I dealt with strategy and financial matters of our virtual enterprise, while my colleagues were working on marketing and manufacturing. During the four months of the exercise, I have experienced finance from various aspects: capital budgeting, through selecting favorable investment for upcoming quarters; debt management, by assessing the necessary amount and efficiency of loans; profitability analysis and dividend policy, which had been used to compile the company’s general performance index. Working in a multinational team, which included an American, a Norwegian and a Moldovan, strengthen my negotiations skills, as well as flexibility and cooperation. But above all, this experience intensified my passion for finance. Of course, a pleasant bonus was the fact that, in the end, our company’s financial performance was six times the performance of second-best team.

Studying Banking and Finance at University of St.Gallen will help me further increase my proficiency of corporate finance and financial markets. The in-depth research of specific topics, as well as a comprehensive curriculum, is a possibility for me to focus on my topic of interest ...

... middle of paper ...

...e quality of labor force, because there are only at most twenty people in the country holding this certification. Because of the strong ethical component of this designation, its principles should be adopted by financial professions everywhere in the world, especially in post-2007 financial crisis days, partly started by a lack of moral principles and diligence.

While for chocolate-lovers Switzerland is synonymous to a yummy heaven, for me the country, being the banking center of the continental Europe, equals to well-established traditions in the financial industry. If you want to learn something excellently, gain the knowledge from the best. Switzerland is one such place that will give me the opportunity to combine the values of both the highly-regarded education in finance and hands-on analysis of theories, applied in Swiss banking and financial systems.