Wendy CHENG and Maryellen WAT, Year 4 students of Environmental Management & Technology Program (EVMT), won the 2nd Business Sustainability & Risk Management Case Analysis Competition 2017 organized by The Association of International Accountants (AIA) – Hong Kong Branch. It’s the second consecutive year that IPO students won the championship.

The competition invited 18 teams nominated by universities and higher education institutions from Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China. The Final Presentation cum Award Presentation Ceremony took place on 23 April 2017.

Participating teams were given a case study of a Hong Kong based building construction company listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a representative office at Guangzhou. The company was going to prepare a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report and participating team would have to prepare a brief report that was ready for integration to the company’s 2016 CSR Report based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 requirements on the following areas:   

• G4-2: Key impacts on sustainability and effects on stakeholders;Impact of sustainability trends, risks, and opportunities on the long-term prospects and financial performance of the company

• G4-EC5: Wage Allocation

• G4-EN22 to G4-EN26: Effluents and Wastes

• G4-SO3 – SO5: Anti-corruption

• G4-SO9 – G4-SO10: Supplier assessment for impact on society

Wendy and Maryellen do not have much experience in case competition and they did not expect to win the champion. As only limited background and data were given on the case study, most of the numbers and data were created by Wendy and Maryellen after conducting extensive research on both Hong Kong and Guangzhou’s situations. They both said the EVMT course Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Management and Reporting had helped them a lot in preparing the report and would like to express their heartfelt thanks to the course instructor Prof J Robert GIBSON. They also want to thanks Charles Wong, a Risk Management & Business Intelligence Year 4 student under IPO who won the competition last year for sharing the experience and practical tips.                

What did make Wendy and Maryellen stand out from other teams including prestigious universities?  They thought the winning key was their presentation. They not only presented the report itself but also reflected and reviewed how the company could do better in future with clear identification of stakeholders and a materiality matrix to show the importance of the material aspects to stakeholders and company. They also took reference from peer companies to create a formal CSR report which impressed the judges. 

Wendy and Maryellen will graduate from HKUST this summer. Maryellen has already received a graduate job offer from Hang Lung Properties.  She likes Hang Lung because it values energy saving and sustainability.  Moreover, the company offers her chances to work in the Mainland China where is a huge market with tons of development opportunities.        

Wendy thinks that sustainability is forward-looking and involves future thinking which must be considered in the whole life cycle of the development of new technologies, so she is looking for job in innovation and technology companies and startups.