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The International Business School Suzhou of China chooses EADA to launch its first ‘international executive programme’ in finance and leadership

9 November 2015

EADA continues to forge agreements with prestigious Chinese institutions. The latest is with the International Business School Suzhou (IBBS), which forms a part of Xi’an Jiatong University of China and Liverpool University (XJTLU). The business school, located in Shanghai, is the first University recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education that offers diplomas which are valid in both the United Kingdom and China.

The agreement between EADA and the IBBS-XJTLU involves jointly designing and running an executive education programme called The Global Series in Finance and Strategic Leadership Programme. This training, the first in executive education that this Chinese institution is launching with another Western business school, will begin in March, 2016. It is targeted at managers and heads of Human Resources who wish to improve their competencies and skills in finance and leadership related areas. The programme, which will run for nine months, is divided into three streams: capital markets, decision making and investment, and strategic leadership. Most of the modules will be taught at IBBS with a week of residential training on EADA’s campus in Collbató.


Jordi Díaz, EADA Head of Studies, alongside Sarah Dixon, Dean of IBBS-XJTLU, after the signing of the collaboration agreement.

A very strong alliance

During the signing of the agreement both institutions highlighted the multiple benefits that participants stand to reap from this programme. In the first place, because the training has been designed to address corporate demands and new global challenges. According to EADA’s Associate Dean for Programmes, Jordi Díaz, “this programme prepares managerial and executive profiles to take on any post of responsibility anywhere in the world, and capacitates them to take strategic decisions in any context or business area”.

Furthermore, both business schools offer differential value which makes them unique. IBBS-XJTLU has its own financial laboratory –The IBBS Financial Lab and Trading Floor– which, in collaboration with the Thompson Reuters Lab, enables students to carry out practice in real time with shares, bonds and other financial products, in addition to constituting a powerful research and analysis tool.

EADA on the other hand is internationally recognised for its pedagogical model, based on learning by doing, in other words, active learning as opposed to traditional “learning by listening”, which furthers the participants’ capacity to reflect upon and act in the face of change, to be more versatile for working in multifunctional teams and to adapt to new global challenges. In addition to this we should also mention the exceptional natural surroundings of the Collbató residential campus, located outside Barcelona, which enable participants to step out of their comfort zone and develop new ideas and more creative ways of thinking.

For all these reasons, the Dean of IBBS-XJTLU, Sarah Dixon, emphasised that “this programmes is an excellent example of international executive education that combines the best of two institutions that strive to offer high quality training and whose programmes aim to prepare participants in competencies and managerial skills that are demanded by the market today”.