To the new EMBA VII Cohort, firstly I’d like to offer my congratulations to each of you, not only for getting through the very stringent admissions, but also for making a truly life-changing decision to pursue the EMBA at Oxford! The 21 months which lie ahead of you will soon prove to be equally extraordinary [...]

Firstly I’d like to say thank you to Owen, Pembroke College and SBS for this very warm welcome. It’s truly wonderful to be here this evening with EMBA VI, especially considering that next time we’ll be here in Oxford together, it will be farewell from EMBA V.
There’s an ancient Chinese saying, “when the student is [...]

Wimbledon, The Royal Henley Regatta, a heat wave, Shakespeare in the amphitheatre, long English summer days and watching the sun set over the cricket field at Worcester College… With the awareness that we will only travel to Oxford together as a class one more time, these paint what I will remember as a romantic English [...]

I’d visited Oxford several times before. The first time, about 12 years earlier, I’d been part of a BBC course. As part of an organized tour we visited famous colleges like Christ Church and St John’s, and pretty much all of the touristy, pretty parts of the town. But to their credit, the tour organizers [...]

I first set foot in Saïd Business School in November, for my admissions interview. Stephan Chambers, Executive MBA Director, was my sole interrogator. It was a tough interview: he was razor sharp. He’d clearly prepared well, and seemingly had known me for years. I’d had an easier time with interview panels of three.
He eventually homed [...]

How does one employ corporate governance to improve internal management? How does one allocate (or re-allocate) finance to improve earnings? As per Edward’s earlier blog, it depends…This is one of many things we learned from Financial Reporting. When reading balance sheets, income statements and deriving cash flows, it all depends…
Who would have thought that Financial Reporting [...]

Back to work in the London office after modules 5 and 6. The pace has stepped up a notch – for the amount of time spent in lectures, pre- and follow up readings and case studies, as well as in the forthcoming series of assessment deadlines and exams.
Since starting the Executive MBA, time management has [...]

Sadly, I haven’t any photos from this past week in Oxford, which is a pity because this time, I had a lovely sole-occupancy flat with a roof terrace on the river next to Oxford Castle. Unbelievable, but true. Claire and I had identical adjacent flats, sharing the expansive roof terrace, and were as such compelled [...]

I always had a desire and a dream since my childhood days to study at Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. In addition I had always been interested in acquiring a management qualification ever since I graduated in Computer Engineering discipline. Combining the two was not very easy considering the strict admission process and the fees involved. [...]

With the London and Boston Marathons just gone, it’s easy to draw parallels between earning the Oxford Executive MBA degree and running the 26.2 mile/42.2 km course. I would know, having finished the London Marathon in 2006 as a bit of a one-hit-wonder (I’m not a runner by any stretch of the imagination).
The anticipation before [...]