GUEST COMMENT: The City is still the best place if you're starting out in finance

When it comes down to working on an exotics derivatives trading desk, studying the Black Scholes formula during your MBA is irrelevant, whether you do it at Harvard or at the university of eastern london your skills will be largely insufficient. That's where the technical maths skills(and computer science skills if you're a quant/structurer/strategist/quant risk manager) will be important. In this arena, the UK is not the strongest place in Europe and that's one hell of an understatement! And the quant types from the U.S are mostly asians that did a Phd or Master in Fin math, i.e they had the bulk of their quant education prior to studying in the U.S in their country of origin. The U.S MBA schools are good if you want to go into marketing or corporate finance/strategy.

Don't put Europe in the argument, because the continent is not geared towards Business School (BS...) training. The continent prepares engineers and mathematicians, and probably the best in the world (did you check where MIT faculty comes from?). Think Ecole Polytechnique, Politecnico di Milano, etc, not to mention the Russians. The US and the UK no longer produce scientists, and it shows (do they make anything?). Btw this explains why the Europeans have taken over the City.

i am not sure any of you are right - i work in a bank in Moscow, Russia. Firstly, - there is more employment out here than in london, secondly, we all know MBA's are great, but it does not depend on where you get it from - it still comes down to who knows who!!!
As to whether US vs Uk are better, that really depends on where you are from. People from the US will always think that US MBA's are harder than Uk's and Visa-Verca...

All you have to ask yourself, is where did the majority of Lehmanns Brothers do there MBA's? and what happend to them?

Milton 05,

>. It's largely irrelevant to use such a narrow example to judge which institutions are better in teaching methods or reputation.>

It's not irrelevant- it's a data point. Insufficient, perhaps- as I have already said in my previous post- but not irrelevant.

My point wasn't to use it as an example to size up Wharton quality vs LBS but to rebut the prior poster's totally unsubstantiated point that US institutions are better than UK..because umm..they are.

Overall, I felt that LBS does give a more rigourous finance education than Wharton, but Wharton has a broader offering of courses in e.g. game theory applications to strategy than LBS, which I found really valuable.

>>The simple fact is that US business schools have endowments of at least ten times what UK business schools enjoy. In terms of research the US institutions are superior.<<

No argument that US B-Schools are vastly richer. You guys keep on churning out the same line- US institutions' research output is superior. Why, because you say so? Have you seen the global research rankings of LBS, LSE, Imperial, etc?

@Anon - only proof you gave there was proof of your idiocy. Why is everyone still talking about MBA stuff? It is as irrelevant to the conversation of research as MBAs are to finance in general

The sheer money spending capacity of US versus UK is impressive alone.

There are lots of good people in the UK and in Europe but the number of big names in US, by far outweighs the number of big names in Europe.