Pisit Putthacharoenwat

Analyst, Lombard Investments

BBA Class of 2011

4 years ago, I was refreshing the internet browser hoping for the coming announcement of a list of successful candidates who would become parts of BBA family. Thinking of the moment I got admitted to BBA Thammasat always makes me smile. During the 4 years of studies, BBA has transformed me from a little kid who wasted most of his time in games to a young financial professional who knows more about his life direction. By writing this, I want to share with you three main things that I have got from BBA: 1) Laying a strong foundation, 2) Pushing your boundary, and 3) Developing your soft skills.

The knowledge today is most likely the derivative of the knowledge yesterday. Because of this, sometimes, it?s difficult for one to identify a true foundation of knowledge. Everyone has his or her own definition of ?foundation?. For business, Foundation is neither accounting, nor finance or even marketing. In my opinion, it?s logic. For a concrete example, most of finance students study free cash flow models probably in 3^rd or 4^th year. Its foundation solely comes from Time Value of Money in your 1^st year. Time Value of Money, in turn, results from such a simple logic as ?Why does your money grow in your bank accounts?? As an Analyst in Private Equity industry, Logic is very important because deal structure can be extremely complicated and, sometimes, completely new. Fortunately, BBA has always stressed the linkages between bodies of knowledge. From my perspective, you don?t need highly-advanced knowledge to get solutions to real world problems. You just need to correctly identify related foundations underlying such problems.