Discovering the Financial World
On November 12, our Finance Expedition started with gathering at Tilburg University. A taxi picked us up and brought us to our hotel in Amsterdam. We had a luxurious stay at the Holiday Inn Express hotel in Amsterdam. After we had arrived at the hotel, everyone got their room keys, dropped off their luggage and gathered at the bar of the hotel to have a free welcome drink. Text by: Max Wilke
Everyone went to bed on time since the next morning we had to get up quite early. Our first day was in the theme of risk management. The first company to visit was Nationale Nederlanden (NN) in Rotterdam. Unfortunately, our planned train got cancelled but that only gave us a 15-minute delay. At NN, we were warmly welcomed by the staff. We got a welcome speech of the campus recruiter and after that, some trainees told us all about the different traineeships at NN. After that we did a great case and got a nice lunch. We had to leave in time since our taxi was waiting for us to bring us back to Amsterdam, to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)! Our afternoon program was at PwC and we again had a nice case and after that we had dinner with everyone, organized by the company, at a restaurant near the office of PwC.
We had to go back to the hotel at 9.30 hours, since a taxi was arriving with new participants that had a stayover at the hotel for the second day: asset management! We welcomed the new participants and said goodbye to some, who had to leave since that was already the end of their Finance Expedition. We bought a welcome drink for the new participants and at midnight, everyone went to bed.
On Thursday morning, we again started our day with a tasteful breakfast. This time we took the train to Utrecht, since we had a company visit at a.s.r.
Our visit at a.s.r. kicked off with an interactive presentation, given by the CFO, Chris Figee! He talked about his career path and gave us some great tips. After that we had a really fun case given by a former Astrics member, Rick van de Meulenhof! The company visit ended with a very cheesy lunch.
After the company visit at a.s.r., we said goodbye to everyone who did not participate in the last day, since they took the train to Tilburg from Utrecht, and everyone who stayed went back to Amsterdam. Since this day ended at 14.00 hours, we all had a free afternoon and evening. Since we fortunately had budget left, we had dinner together at a restaurant near the hotel. Again at 22.00 hours, a new taxi with new students arrived at the hotel, and we again had a drink together with them.
On Friday, last but not least, we had the corporate finance day. Fortunately, this day was completely in Amsterdam and we had our morning program at Deloitte. This was actually a fun case to solve for econometricians, since we had to solve different kinds of puzzles. After the case we had lunch and took the bus to the last company Nielen Schuman. Nielen Schuman is a company specializing in corporate finance and we had a long, but fun case. After that we again had dinner with the company, some of us got tipsy, and after that we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and get the train back to Tilburg, to look back at a wonderful quest for excellence!
