The MBA Class had an exciting start to the New Year with four new Leadership Experience workshops which took place in January and February. The workshops were delivered by ABB, Novartis, Credit Suisse and IBM.

The MBA attracts a diverse range of nationalities each year and around 25% of our MBA Alumni come from across of Asia.  On graduation, some return to Asia and others remain in Switzerland or elsewhere in Europe.  As their careers progress, however, all of them are contributing to the growing connections between Swiss and Asian businesses. We caught up with two of our graduates from the classes of 2005 and 2006, one based in Asia, the other in Switzerland, whose careers place them at the forefront of developing economic ties between Europe and Asia.

Next week sees the launch of the Learning Assessment Week (LAW) at the St.Gallen MBA. But unlike a traditional assessment, the LAW takes the form of a 90 minute individual verbal examination by a panel of academic and corporate experts.

The MBA Lounge offers HSG students who possess full-time working experience an exclusive and targeted platform to meet and discuss career opportunities with international recruiting companies. This year, 15 companies join the MBA Lounge to interview and discuss job opportunities...

The Financial Times has ranked the full-time MBA programme at the University of St.Gallen 23rd in Europe and 93rd worldwide. The St.Gallen MBA has become the first and, to date, only full-time MBA programme from the German-speaking region to enter the world's top 100 MBA programmes.

The India Competence Center of the University of St.Gallen takes great pleasure in announcing that the study "The bumpy road to India - market entry challenges for Swiss companies, lessons learned" has officially been released with a press statement on January 19th.

Project Firefly launched today as a unique discussion platform to help bring together leading academics, politicians and businesses with the next generation of leaders from around the world.

On Wednesday 7th of December, the St.Gallen MBA Alumni organised an exciting "Evening on Risk" at the Swiss Re offices in Zurich.

The Financial Times has ranked the University of St.Gallen 12th in its 2011 European Business School Ranking. Thus the HSG has gained four places in comparison with 2010. In this annual ranking, published December 5th 2011, the Financial Times assesses Europe's 75 best business universities.

QS TOP MBA published the new Global 200 Business Schools Report 2012 on December 05. The St.Gallen MBA moves up to No.18 on the QS ranking of top European MBA Schools.

Lalit Mohan, MBA Alumni (2011): The St Gallen MBA was the perfect fit for my requirements. One of the major reasons I decided on St Gallen was because I felt it would be such a wonderful learning experience to study in a programme which values diversity, and with a class strength ranging from only 40-50. Add to that an opportunity to live in Switzerland, learn about a new culture and pick up a new language...

The St.Gallen MBA was pleased to be able to welcome back three alumni from the classes of 2005 and 2007 for an industry session focusing on the banking and finance sector. Alumni participating in the event were: David Hakobyan, 2005, RBS Coutts; Avinash Acharya, 2005, UBS; and Oldrik Verloop, 2007, Wegelin.

As every year in August, this year, too, teams from the best business schools met up at the shore of Lake Zurich to paddle their lungs out. As every year, the weather was fantastic again. Someone up in heaven must be a big fan of the race.

During the first weekend of September, the inaugural annual St. Gallen MBA Alumni Homecoming Weekend took place. The Homecoming Weekend Events were attended by more than 100 participants, representing all MBA classes from 2005 to 2011. The weekend was shaped by three different elements including: a learning element, an inspirational element and a social element, promoting not only life-long learning, but also the great network opportunities available to MBA Alumni.

On August 27, the full-time and part-time Classes of 2011 graduated from the St.Gallen MBA programme in the Pfalzkeller underneath the famous Cathedral of St.Gallen. The graduation was attended by over 200 guests and 74 students. The day was shaped by interesting speeches, Best Lecturer Awards, the Dean's List Awards as well as a great atmosphere and a concluding Apéro.

On August 22-26, the PLD / Part-time MBA class had its first module in the WBZ in St.Gallen.

The MBA Summer School module on "The Future of Banking and Finance" with Dr. Rob Straw, which took part at the beginning of July, was a great mixture of practitioner lectures, theoretical insights and case-based discussions about the current state and coming development of the international capital markets.

In February 2011 a group of very pro-active Alumni got together at the Meson Neruidano in Santiago.  In parallel, the Swiss Chamber of Commerce opened the first poisiton for the CooperativeLab traineeship in Chile, starting in August.

As a final part of the St.Gallen MBA Programme, the candidates have the opportunity to complete a three-month in-company project. The aims of the project are to carry out academic objectives within the programme as well as aid the candidates in fulfilling their long-term career goals.

Prof. Sir James A. Mirrlees, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, spoke on Tuesday morning at the University of St.Gallen during a special Economic Research Seminar on "Optimal taxation of saving and inheritance".

Marie Ringler of Vienna, Austria, St.Gallen MBA part-time alumnus from the class of 2010, has received media attention this past month. Ringler, who used to be a parliamentary representative for the Green Party in Vienna, took on a new important role as country director of Akosha in Austria after completing the MBA. Akosha is the biggest international non-profit organization that focuses its efforts on the promotion of businesses worldwide that pursue a social objective.

On the 22nd January 2011, the St.Gallen MBA held its annual alumni event at the Zunfthaus zur Rüden in Zürich. The event was well attended this year with over 100 MBA graduates and current students representing every class from both the Full- and Part-time MBA programmes.

Prof. Simon Evenett, Academic Director of the St.Gallen MBA, attended the 10th annual OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Global Forum on Competition, which took place at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris, France, on 17 & 18 February. As the name implies, the OECD is an international economic organization that was founded in 1961, and it is comprised of 34 countries dedicated to stimulating economic progress and world trade.

Nathan Turner, St.Gallen MBA 2010 graduate, currently resides and works in Porto, Portugal, and is the Vice-President of Marketing at Living PlanIT. Living PlanIT is an international business that focuses on developing innovative and efficient city-scale technologies. The context for this is a world increasingly characterized by escalating and often uncontrolled urbanization giving rise to problems of stress and sustainability throughout the urban infrastructure.

On February 10th and 11th, Credit Suisse conducted a course on Managerial Effectiveness. The course was led by Michael Steinerand Frank Hermle of Credit Suisse and took place within the scope of the St.Gallen MBA Leadership Advisory Board.

The first Women in Business event of the year took place in cooperation with HSG Women in Zurich on the 27th of January. The event began with an apéro and continued with a discussion focusing on the topic "Do women ask enough?"

In the Spring of each year, the University of St.Gallen hosts the HSG TALENTS Conference, a major recruitment event held with around 100 international recruiting companies. Alongside the Conference is a dedicated recruitment event specifically for St.Gallen MBA participants: The MBA Lounge

A new amendment on a Swiss by-law, which will take effect on 01.01.2011, will allow third country nationals who receive a degree from a Swiss university to stay in Switzerland for up to six months to seek full, permanent employment.

The St.Gallen MBA hosted a double event in Zurich on 24 November 2010. The topic of both events was Banking and started out with an Alumni panel for the current MBA students. The evening concluded with the launch of the St.Gallen MBA Brownbag Series with guests from the corporate and academic world.

Prof. Simon Evenett, who teaches the Business Environment course in the St.Gallen MBA programme, has received extensive media coverage for his views regarding the recent global dispute on China's exchange rate policy and the G20 Summit meeting in Seoul on 11-12 November.

Guest speaker Dr. Mirjam Staub-Bisang is a founder and managing partner at Independent Capital Management AG, an asset management and real estate advisory firm, based in Zurich, Switzerland. She started her career as a lawyer with the law firm Schellenberg Wittmer in Zurich. She is also a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.

Five full-time St.Gallen MBA students were selected to be given iPads to use during their studies. In order to qualify as one of the five candidates to be given an iPad, the students had to share their thoughts on how the latest technology can best be integrated into the MBA classroom and provide a sustainable and innovative learning experience to the students.

An EQUIS peer review visit was conducted at the University of St.Gallen at the end of 2009, and the University has been given EQUIS accreditation for another three years from 2010 to 2013.

The St.Gallen MBA enrolled new classes this Fall for the full and part-time MBA. The Full-time MBA has recruited students from 24 Nationalities from 5 continents and the Part-time MBA has 16 nationalities from 4 continents.

An integral part of the programme in St.Gallen is the MBA Project, an in-company, consultancy-style project. Here are the latest statistics for the class of 2010.

A delegation of St. Gallen MBA students attended a networking event in London at the Swiss Embassy on the 4th of March in collaboration with IMD.

The Inter-American Development Bank will be at the HSG main campus on 22 March and is looking to recruit HSG MBA students.

On 10 March 2010 the first MBA Lounge took place in conjunction with the HSG TALENTS Conference, the University of St. Gallen's annual recruitment event.

Lloyd's of London CEO, Dr. Richard Ward, visited the University of St. Gallen on the 9th of March and gave a guest lecture to the St. Gallen MBA students.

The 1st St. Gallen Forum for the Management of Renewable Energies will take place in the Einstein Congress Hotel on 11 and 12 March 2010.