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ICAEW Lecture and Business Game Held at HSE St Petersburg

ICAEW Lecture and Business Game Held at HSE St Petersburg

On October 4, a lecture and business game were organized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and held at HSE Saint Petersburg.

James Patrick, ACA Development and Special Projects Manager at ICAEW, delivered a lecture on the fundamentals of accounting and auditing. Not only HSE learners, but also students from other universities attended this lecture.

During the lecture, real cases from ICAEW’s accounting practice were presented, while participants had the opportunity to solve some of them based on their knowledge in accounting and business. Furthermore, Francesca Hayhoe, Marketing Manager at ICAEW, curated a business game for the attendees.

Anna Bourne, International Business Development Manager (Russia and CIS) at ICAEW, noted that the students enjoyed taking active part in the business game, in which they analyzed a company's position in the market, estimated its financial condition, and offered recommendations on its business development.

She added that the students coped with this task and demonstrated a good understanding of business organization ideas. The lecture’s atmosphere was that of keen interest and direct participation in the case studies. HSE students gave high marks to the ICAEW lecturer and noted that they would be glad if all lectures were organized in a similar way, with interactive elements and a practical analysis of the material on hand. The working language of the business game and lecture was English, and our students were able to demonstrate their excellent knowledge of the language. Anna Bourne noted that HSE’s students are intelligent and highly educated young people, who will undoubtedly become business leaders in the near future, as they understand the value of education and knowledge in today’s Russia.

Maxim Isakov, a third year student in HSE’s Management programme, shared his impressions:

‘Solving business cases is an interesting activity. When it is conducted in English and led by the representatives of a British international company, it is difficult to find a more attractive opportunity to test myself, practice my language skills and have fun. I attended the ICAEW event by accident, as I simply mistook it for another lecture in English. By a happy coincidence, as soon as I walked into the room, I was able to become a team member and met the people with whom we won the game three hours later.

‘Such events bring new emotions and new ideas. That’s just what you need when you are a student, standing at life’s crossroads and thinking about where to go. As a result, I met nice people, communicated with native speakers and specialists in accounting and finance, and got effective training in teamwork, brainstorming and presentation skills.

‘It’s interesting that we won not due to skillful calculations, great presentation and performance, but owing to the fact that we analyzed not only the company’s potential profit, but its ethical issues. We thought about its corporate social responsibility. It’s nice to know that ethics today play an important role in business and can be a key to success.’