Fuqua Dean: Emerging Markets M&A Interest is Heating Up

Posted by: Jena McGregor on August 10, 2009

If class interest is any indication, mergers & acquisitions at emerging markets firms are about to heat up. At least that’s what I took away from my lunch with Blair Sheppard, the dean of the Fuqua School of Business and the founder and chairman of Duke Corporate Education, the No. 1 customized executive education program in the country, according to BusinessWeek’s rankings.

Executives from India, China, Russia and the Middle East are starved for insights on how to acquire and buy companies. He’s seen a “5 to 10-fold increase” in interest in such classes from Fuqua’s growing global campuses. And as my colleagues in China noted in a recent article, they’re not necessarily looking to buy local: Chinese companies have been revving up their dealmaking machine, looking far and wide for targets.

Sheppard had a few insights about this year’s entering MBA class, too—the first to start the program after Wall Street’s fall from grace last September. For one, he says, there’s more women, with 39% of the class female. There are far more students who are concentrating on entrepreneurship, and many more who are wanting to concentrate on health care (Duke has a special program on health sector management).

Plus, the number of students interested in social entrepreneurship is way up, too, with 55 students designated as focusing on that niche (there were just six four years ago) and membership in the NetImpact club at a remarkable half the class. In a recent welcome session, Sheppard says, he asked the students “how many want to change the world?” and nearly everyone raised their hands. When he asked how many were willing to make $30,000 a year to do so, only about 30 volunteered. Still, says Blair, that’s more than two or three years ago, when those who wanted to do social entrepreneurship were more apt “to put their head down.”

While Sheppard jokes that he’s going to have a fundraising problem in two years, there’s a palpable excitement in his voice, too. “I think it’s a sea change,” he says of the interest in business serving the greater good and the greater diversity in the MBA classroom. “People who didn’t think they had access to business now do.”

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