WATERLOO, Ont. (Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012) - January was a winning month for students from the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) at the University of Waterloo, as they won or placed highly in three provincial and national competitions.

Faizan Siddiqui, Onisifor Prisecaru and Roshin Mathew won top honours in the “Battle for CA$H” competition that the Institute for Chartered Accountants of Ontario (ICAO) hosts. They outperformed more than 40 teams from 21 different university programs in completing a skill-testing simulation. The first-year accounting and financial management students won a cash prize of $3,000, and an additional $1,500 for their university accounting or business society.

“I didn’t expect to win it because we came here as a wild card, but we were determined to put ourselves out there,” said Siddiqui. “If you strive for excellence, you will find success, and that happened today.”

Later in the month, one SAF team beat outeight other teams when the students won Ryerson University’s financial management case competition, “Battle on Bay Street.” Jimmy Chang, Gordon Li, Daniel Pacione and Stephen Yi from the Mathematics/Chartered Accountancy program won $2,500 by advising the management team of a real-life startup company seeking venture capital funding. The team of Meng Wang from the Accounting & Financial Management program, Anqi Wang from the Computing and Financial Management program, and Roy Shou from the Math-Business program came second.

In addition, SAF students Ian Gutwinski, Michael Y Liu and Connor Kingston placed in the top three at the University of British Columbia’s National Investment Banking Competition (NIBC) in Vancouver. This year’s preliminary round of the competition attracted 486 students from both undergraduate and MBA pools. Competitors submitted a solution to a finance case that investment bankers from Macquarie Capital, RBC Capital Markets, CIBC World Markets, Global Securities and MDATraining prepared. In the final round, they presented to an audience of more than 300 students, faculty and industry professionals.

"The abilities demonstrated by these SAF students and their keen interest in thearea of accounting and finance are impressive. We are proud of the accomplishments they achieved,” said Jim Barnett, SAF director.

About the School of Accounting and Finance

The School of Accounting and Finance is the largest professional school of its kind in English-speaking Canada. Established in 1981, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs designed to provide students with the competencies, professionalism and practical experience they need to excel in their chosencareers. The school offers undergraduate co-op programs in accounting, finance and computing and financial management. It also offers masters programs in accounting and taxation and a PhD program in accounting. For more details, go to saf.uwaterloo.ca.

About the University of Waterloo

In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada's leading comprehensive universities with 34,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. Waterloo, as home to the world's largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research and discovery. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. For more informationabout Waterloo, visit www.uwaterloo.ca.

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