Teams of Columbia Business School MBA students won both first and second place in the Turnaround Management Association’s 2008 Carl Marks Student Paper Competition on August 15.Advised by Professor Laura Resnikoff, director of the Private Equity Program, the teams were selected as winners of the case study category for skillfully handling issues of corporate distress, financial restructuring and reorganization, in addition to the quality of writing and analysis in their papers.The first place team, comprised of Aaron Baker ’08, Lauren Cassidy ’08, Josh Goodman ’08, Josh Siegel ’08 and Erik Ulin ’08, proposed a turnaround plan for Circuit City aimed at strengthening its competitive position and making it an attractive LBO candidate.The second place team, which included Chester Han ’08, Andrew Huml ’08 (EMBA), Anand Kagalkar ’08 (EMBA), Kristy Sundjaja ’08 (EMBA) and Lena Saito, a visiting scholar with the Center on Japanese Economy and Business, presented a strategy to restructure and stabilize Circuit City’s operations in order to regain market share, return to profitability and pursue global expansion.This is the second year in a row that teams from Columbia Business School have dominated the case study category of this competition, winning first and second place. In 2006 and 2005, teams from CBS won second place.The cash prizes – $3,000 for first place and $1,500 for second place – are funded by Carl Marks Advisory Group LLC in New York. The Turnaround Management Association funds one member of the first and second place teams to attend the annual convention in New Orleans, October 27-29.