In this issue:
Alumni
- Founders' news: Toms Niparts’15, Eerik Oja’11, Danielius Stasiulis'09 & others
- One of us — Miķelis Putniņš'14: The Path to Rediscovering Myself
Association
- ~50 alumni met in Cheers Alumni in the new Global Meeting Place
- ~10 Estonian alumni gathered for a virtual Easter reunion
- Future events (discussion with Krists Avots’13, trial of Akmis Lomsargis'00)
School
- Alumni Career Sessions: from Management to Marketing
- Vladlens Kovaļevs’16 & 70+ others in the boardrooms of Y3 Strategy Course
- AA donates EUR 1500 to co-finance Y1 real life practice of digital advertising
Feature by Milda Tylaitė’07
- Could auditors be the winners in COVID-19? (text or podcast)
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To a great extent, play is about problem solving and excitement. Being strongly connected with creativity, boldness and risk-taking, it provides us space to test new solutions. The way we play, transforming and enriching the world with our imagination, is a skill that can be cultivated. It can become a tool that can lead us to realising our life’s work.
We hope you remember how to play. Let’s remember together. Let’s inspire and support each other. Because it helps all of us grow — and because it’s fun.
cheers, Marta Metuzāle’20, Viktoryia Pilinko’14, Katya Firyan'03, Akmis Lomsargis’00
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Founders |
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Uldis Tēraudkalns’10 and Jānis Zeps’10 started a podcast series “The Pursuit of Scrappiness”. In their interviews with founders and CEOs, they share the latest news in tech and business from a uniquely Baltic perspective. Find two episodes with our alumni below (click on a photo to listen).
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Toms Niparts’15, Jeff App CEO & Co-founder |
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Together with a co-founder Reinis Tenis’15, Toms just closed a $1M fundraising round! In a podcast, he shares his experience of starting a business remotely on the other side of the world.
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Eerik Oja’11, PLANET42 CEO & Co-founder |
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In this episode, Eerik reveals that he hires only kind people to operate his USD 20 million worth car fleet in South Africa. Now, Planet 42 is on its way to expand to Mexico.
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In the News |
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Rasa Gulbe'18 |
on how a design of a solution affects the overall impact of the project (in English).
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Gediminas Užkuraitis'15 |
on improving brand image towards successful business strategy (in Lithuanian)
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Martynas Stankevičius'13 |
Quarantine for real estate is over in Lithuania (in Lithuanian)
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Zane Čulkstēna'03 |
discusses the future of Riga Jurmala Music Festival (in Latvian).
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One of us: Miķelis Putniņš'14 |
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A heart-warming story of an SSE Rigan turned musician: Mikelis shares what gave him strength to follow his true calling and how this journey transformed him |
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The Path to Rediscovering Myself |
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Music has always been a big part of my life. Even during SSE Riga times I had a band and kept writing music. But it wasn’t at all obvious to me how to turn it into a career. So I kept it at the back of my mind, and tried imagining myself doing other things, thinking what else I could do.
I was a year 2 student, when it just became obvious to me that I couldn’t let go of that thing called music. I realised that even though I didn’t want to drop out after investing 2 years into studies, it was not going to be something I will find a career in. I just didn’t have a passion for it… and I really believe that to become truly good at something, you have to fall in love with it.
So I graduated. And I felt like I needed a break.
The next few years have seen all sorts of highs and lows. First, on an invitation from good friends, I went to...
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Cheers Alumni in our new Meeting Place |
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Hosts set the mood at the main stage
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Last standing in the lounge
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~50 alumni, over 2 hours of fun, live performance, greeting by a surprise guest and desire for the show to go on — this is how the first online event Cheers Alumni went!
After joining the Board of Alumni Association, Arta Beitāne'15 said “we need an alumni place”. Last Thursday (Apr 15) her team has delivered a fully furnished Alumni Club for our first ever virtual social event. It was co-hosted by Vilma Green'04 from London (who suggested the concept), Nikita Strezhnev’17 from Riga (who proposed the platform) and Arta herself from Paris filling up for all the unexpected matters.
After familiarizing with the reality-like spatial sound chat in the lounge, we got our mood set at the main stage by hosts & president Inese which was followed by socializing in smaller self grouped circles with some call backs to the main stage for surprises (e.g. hello from Morten Hansen disguised as Stephen King, live song by Ieva Pecukevičiūtė’17). The event was scheduled to finish after 2 hours but some of us stayed way longer than that.
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Keynote by Ieva Pecukevičiūtė’17 on the main stage
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Estonian alumni's Reunion |
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Estonians gathered for a virtual Easter reunion, connecting from as near as Estonia & Ireland to as far as Turkey, Dubai & Australia.
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Alumni Association (AA) Update |
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President Inese Jureviča’00 participated in her very first SSE Riga Foundation Board meeting. She has "outlined AA objectives and planned events for 2021, raised concerns regarding the need of activation of Baltic Alumni chapters and pitched an idea of creating an interactive digital communication platform, essentially an app, for alumni/student community to be able to engage and exchange information instantly", and asks us to keep our fingers crossed for this initiative to be implemented!
Financial Statement for 2020 was finalised.
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Lecture by Rihards Garančs'12 (with input by Krists Avots'13) |
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The first Alumni Discussion this year (Mar 30) and the very first one ever for us out of Riga (thank you, pandemics and Maira Rjabina). Almost fifty of us have listened to the lecture followed by (a nice surprise) a comment. Q&A was opened in the after time.. so nobody dared to unmute :)
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Limits of Business Ethics |
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Thanks to almost 60 of you who have answered the question raised in the previous issue ('Unreliable finance? 3 alumni companies — Europe's fastest growers'). It was not meant to judge anyone as good or bad but to draw the editorial guidance for the future.
We will have a discussion and not to repeat ourselves the question will be turned upside down i.e. was there a sufficient ground for even raising this?
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- April 23, 16:00 Public Discussion with Raimonds Tomsons on Wines, Sustainability and Climate Change. Pre-registration required.
- May 6, 18:00 Alumni Discussion Club Krists Avots’13: Agile @ Enterprise — a not that short journey to shorten the time-to-market. Pre-registration is required.
- May 12, 18:00 Limits of Ethics or Trial of Akmis Lomsargis’00. Judged by Xavier Landes, Business Ethics Professor. Save the date by joining FB event.
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Marketing lecturer Marius Raugalas’09 the 2nd best in chess |
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Out of 30 players who participated in SSE Riga tournament. The first and the third places were taken by Roberts Salenieks and Mārtiņš Rozenbaums (both will soon join our alumni community).
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Brand strategist Oskars Stucis'04 interview in tomorrow’s Insider |
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Tomorrow (23) the students’ Insider will feature an interview with Oskars Stucis’04 on how he enjoyed the Economic Anthropology course & how short term orientation is common among marketers.
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Alumni Career Sessions: from Management to Marketing |
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Evelina Saurusevičiūtė'14, Viktorija Meikšāne'01, Viktors Bolbats'07 & Taavi Einaste'02 have shared with students their path to the managerial roles in the Alumni Career Session on April 1. The talks were followed by a Q&A with students so lively that Taavi had no other option but to stay while cooking dinner for his children.
Next session will be on Marketing. Reply to this email or directly to Inese Jureviča if you have a story or two to share with students.
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More than 75 alumni in the boardrooms of Y3 Strategy Course |
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Yuri Romanenkov'07, Course Director: "on 15-16 April, over 75 alumni along with 12 faculty members & SSE Riga Foundation Board Members congregated in 18 virtual boardrooms to examine Y3 students at the end of their Strategy course. This year students, playing CEOs in front of pretend Boards, discussed innovative milk, toys, and pharmaceuticals. We are tremendously grateful to all the alumni who've taken half a day to pressure-test our students' thinking."
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Alumni in Days of Opportunities |
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We spotted Anastasiya Sharanovich'20, Elīza Oša-Večena'18, Gintaras Matuzas'12, Juris Grišins'01 but obviously there were many more of us in this (second already) virtual DoO.
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Last call for BSc internships |
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If you need an intern, email Marina Troškova (marina.troskova@sseriga.edu), BSc Programme International Manager.
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AA donates EUR 1500 to co-finance Y1 real life practice in FB advertising |
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AA donates EUR 1500 to co-finance Y1 real life practice — digital advertising campaigns (initiated by faculty member Marius Raugalas’09). 32 student teams will each spend EUR 100 for 16 businesses suggested by alumni and students.
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SA fundraiser for SSE Riga dorms |
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Less than a month remaining to the Admissions deadline, SA broadcasted a funny movie about the improvements needed in SSE Riga dorms. President Kristine Polija believes that this has not discouraged any international students from applying. SSE Riga Facilities agree that the state of the dorms is lower than that of the school and plan to focus on their renovation for the coming semester.
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Faculty call for corporate partners |
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Meanwhile faculty members emailed all of us the invitation for our companies to co-finance the student startup incubator project. Faculty representatives have not commented to Alumni Insider if any alumni have offered their support.
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Meeting etiquette — cameras on |
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While wearing small patterns or large prints is a no go in the online meetings according to the recently approved SSE Riga Online Meeting Etiquette.
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Research jobs for 5 students |
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5 students were employed at the school as full time research assistants thanks to the support by the Latvian Employment State Agency.
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BSc admissions deadline — this Sunday (April 25) |
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Despite craziness of the pre-deadline times Daiga Brakmane, BSc Recruitment Officer, has dedicated time to recall some of us who have this year contributed to the search for our future generation: Valters Apfelbaums'20, Akaki Tkeshelashvili'20, Kristiāns Lancmanis’19, Jörgen Jõulu'18 & all his Estonian co, Ingus Zeļenkovs'18, Laura Noor’17, Nikita Strezhnev'17, Ecaterina Şilova'15, Irina Chedric'15, Yauheniya Hrynko’15, Viktoryia Pilinko'14, Justas Šaltinis'11, Petras Jurkuvenas'06, Inese Jureviča'00, Akmis Lomsargis'00 as well as alumni faculty members: Rihards Garančs'12, Yuri Romanenkov'07, Inga Gleizdāne'06 and many others who took part in organized events, encouraged bright young fellows and spread the news in other ways. Thanks!
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Feature by Milda Tylaitė’07 |
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Milda is an Assistant Professor in Accounting at the Stockholm School of Economics and a devoted fan of Swedish fika. |
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The audit profession is not a generous one – one rarely gets publicly praised for a good job done, whereas mistakes are not easily forgotten. Arthur Andersen’s failure of biblical proportions in Enron audits is already a part of collective business memory; more recent events such as EY failure to discover the absence of reported cash in Wirecard also do not help to build auditors’ appeal. In privately held firms, financial statement audit tends to be seen as an administrative burden rather than value-creating service. COVID-19 has created opportunities to change this.
Recent decades were not easy for the auditors. After Enron, the debate on public firms’ audits has focused on auditor independence. A separate, though related, discourse has questioned the statutory audit requirements for privately held entities. Under normal circumstances, it has been argued, the cost of audit outweighs the benefit of external assurance for such firms - and thus statutory audit requirements were gradually lifted (or thresholds increased) in the EU as well as in other parts of the world, allowing most of the private companies to go under the statutory supervision radar.
It hardly will come as a surprise to this audience that most of the companies that were relieved of the audit requirement chose to not have such an external assurance arrangement. For instance, in Scandinavian countries (highlighted here due to the undeniable benefit of having all types of corporate data available for an external observer), over 80% of all companies under the audit thresholds now prepare their financial statements without any auditor involvement. Indeed, even though voluntary audit appears to reduce the probability of tax audits and lower the cost of external debt, under normal operational circumstances such benefits do not seem to outweigh the immediate costs of having to pay the audit fee.
Figure: Global audit requirements in private firms
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This figure presents an overview of audit requirements applicable at the end of 2020 for private limited liability companies in largest 50 economies (2020 estimates by GDP) and EU countries that fall outside this list. For more information refer to Dong, Tylaite, and Wilson (2021) and the Federation of European Accountants (2016).
Then came COVID-19
Then came COVID-19 and with it, the unprecedented operating restrictions. The COVID-19 pandemic differs markedly from other crises as the economy has been hit not by the traditional economic forces, but by governmental actions. Many retailers and service industry actors were forced to shut down, whereas others faced substantial revenue drops. Governments across the world tried to counteract the effects of these restrictions by initiating a series of state support mechanisms. These, while different in the specifics of the support package structures, roughly can be categorized as follows: first, subsidize drop in revenues and cover the expenses (e.g. revenue drop compensation mechanisms). Second, provide repayable support (e.g. state-backed loans). Third, allow employment flexibilities and related financial reliefs (e.g. furloughs; social contribution reliefs).
But while the governments have been setting up huge support packages to keep the businesses afloat, a series of problems emerged...
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Asta Spulytė, Jana Dranenkaitė-Rudė & Milda Tylaitė (all class of 2007) after submitting their BSc thesis.
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Postscript by the Editor. Thank you for reading until the end. I leave you with a piece of contemporary art from the SSE Riga collection.
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Tāfele (Blackboard) by Ieva Iltnere, 1994
What is it? It's a painting by the renowned Latvian painter. What's the meaning of it? It's figurative, so it's up to your own interpretation!
Source: Elizabete Fleišmane'??, 2017, "What even is this?" - The SSE Riga contemporary art collection, Insider #150.
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Erratum in Alumni Insider
If you've noticed any mistakes or omissions in this issue, kindly hit reply.
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Alumni Insider insider@alumni.lv
This newsletter aims to provide you with quality time by consolidating all you need to know about fellow alumni and our future generations in a single email, published monthly every fourth Thursday.
You can contribute by sharing relevant news (question, photo, idea) or an article to the alumni group and/or emailing to the editors. We will publish your news in the next (if received by the fourth Monday) or the following newsletter.
Bypass spam: you could stop this newsletter ending up in your spam folder by white listing our email address. How to do it, depends on your email provider - ask google or your tech support staff.
Editorial Board (in formation from Insider Chiefs): Sergey Nizheborsky'96, Dmitriy Medvedjko'00, Irina Harlampjeva'01, Jonas Jokstys'03, Lina Banyte-Surpliene'05, Tomas Sudnius'06, Edgars Cerps'07, Marius Zemaitis'08, Vaidotas Lasas'09, Karolis Liaudinskas'10, Ginvile Ramanauskaite'11, Jekaterina Kolbina'12, Tatiana Arventi'13, Viktoria Pilinko'14, Valeria Gavrilan'16, Maksis Gauja'18, Elizabete Fleišmane'??, Marta Metuzāle'20, Daniela Gerda Baranova'21, Una Narnicka'22, Kristers Šavalgins'23.
Old issues Jan, 2021 (#1); Feb, 2021 (#2); Mar, 2021 (#3).
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