A Texas MBA team won first place and $10,000 at the seventh annual National Energy Finance Challenge on Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. McCombs also took home the top prize in 2010.

The winning team consisted of students John Shaddix, Chris Wolf, Jake Stroud, Ben Beyer, and Sudamsh Bai Reddy. They beat MIT in the first round and faced Purdue, Columbia, and Yale in the finals.

Left to right: Case writer Carlos Gonzalez, from Chevron; Texas MBAs Ben Beyer, Sudamsh Bai Reddy, Jake Stroud, and Chris Wolf; and case writer Ryan Anderson, from Chevron. Not pictured: Texas MBA team member John Shaddix.“There was some pressure on us to perform well and put up a good show considering that last year's team won the challenge," said Bai Reddy. "I am very happy that we could keep the winning streak going.”

The Energy Finance Challenge is a business case competition focused on real-life finance issues within the energy industry. The 2011 case involved developing and commercializing oil resources found in a fictional resource-rich-but-economically-disadvantaged developing country. The challenge included choosing a pipeline route while designing a suite of social investment and infrastructure projects that would benefit the people and government. To further complicate matters, the country had a history of piracy, civil war, and political corruption.

The event was supported by Chevron (which also provided the case), ExxonMobil, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, ConocoPhillips and the Energy Management and Innovation Center (EMIC) at the University of Texas at Austin. Executives from the sponsoring companies and supporters of EMIC served as judges.

The two-day case challenge took place at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center in Austin.