Sunday, January 20, 2008 Language of Business By Stella A. Estremera
THE 7th Language of Business Seminar for Journalists "Business Finance in Asian Setting", the invitation from the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) described the course.
It's not an offer you get everyday, not even every year, who wouldn't jump at the invitation?
So, jump I did.
But on the very first day, in the state of the art classroom at the Global Distance Learning Center of AIM in Makati with Professor Federico M. Macaranas PhD, the executive director of the AIM Policy Center, discussing macroenomics and global economics like it's something he talks over coffee everyday (which he probably does), I came face to face with the reason why I'm a journalist with an architecture education and not a businessman with an accounting degree. At AIM, they call accounting the language of business. It was one big d-uh?
Prof. Macaranas apparently reading the big d-uh on our faces very patiently (with some bits of tartness put in every time our faces go blank) walked us through why OFW contributions are not counted as part of the gross domestic product while expats earnings are. (And that was just the start).
The fact that AIM was right in front of Greenbelt 1 and was thus a walking distance from all Greenbelts out there couldn't entice me to go the distance and shop (nor have dinner) after class. I only had enough energy to return to my hotel room at ACCM (also at the AIM campus) and decompress, my ears ringings from the day's lectures on a very alien language called the Language of Business.
I wasn't alone, I learned from our class president Susan Africa-Manikan while we filled our lungs with poison at the smoking area. Of the 21-student class, 20 of us were zonked and feeling unworthy by day's end. The only one surviving it seemed was Indonesian Suhartono Chandra of the Marketing Magazine in Jakarta, who apparently has a good background on business (as manifested by the way he calculated through Microsoft Excel while the lecturers were talking in a way that I could have zipped through Adobe Photoshop, except that the professors wouldn't be needing anything from Photoshop)... As Prof. Ricardo A. Lim PhD, associate dean of the W. Sycip Graduate School of Business (WSGSB) and the Don Benigno Toda Jr. Professor of Business Management, raved about Excel and the wonders and ease it has created for the world of business. And I once again went d-uh?
"We're going to have fun," said Prof. Richard L. Cruz, core faculty in the Master in Business administration Program of the WSGSB, coming in after another WSGSB core faculty Prof. Gary B. Olivar made us chew on financial forecasting, capital budgeting, and capital structure from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m..
"Yeahrright," I whispered to my seatmate Xaris Tamayo.
But true enough, by the fifth day, we were cheering on our group's appointed CEO, George Irvan of Metro TV in Jakarta, as we argued on decisions that have to be made with the Business Simulator game, which pitted each individual group with other IT companies like Hewlett Packard and Apple Computers, cracking our heads with on-time inventory, capital budgeting and expenditures, and sensitivity analyses for long and short-term loans and product pricing.
As expected, Suhartono's group made it to the top place in terms of market value for both their company and their CEO. But ours was the noisiest, and thus I can assume we had the most fun.
*****
From our alumni kit: The AIM has been conducting the "Language of Business (LOB), A Seminar for Journalists" through the Gov. Jose B. Fernandez Jr. Center for Banking and Finance (AIM JBF Center) and the W. SyCip Graduate School of Business (WSGSB).
A brainchild of the Institute and the Far East Bank & Trust Co. back in 1994, the Gov. Jose B. Fernandez Jr. Center for Banking and Finance (AIM JBF Center) continuously endeavors research and discussion on issues pertinent to financial institution and related services, the competence of financial managers in Asia, and the forging of alliances among business institutions in Asia.
The LOB equips its participants with basic knowledge in statistics, economics, accounting, and financial tools. For the journalists, the course aims to improve the quality of reportage on Asian business and economic affairs. Non-journalists, on the other hand, are presented both learning and networking opportunities.
