Executive education for Baosteel managers

Thirteen senior managers from China’s Baosteel Corporation recently completed a 10-day tailor-made training on Strategic Management at MSM. Besides lectures, the participants interacted with business executives during tailored company visits and took part in cultural activities in and around Maastricht.

Mr. Zhou Zhongxi, Chief Representative of the Vietnam Representative Office - Baosteel Singapore PTE Ltd., expressed his satisfaction with the quality of the lectures: "I am very impressed by the excellent lectures, which are quite helpful to my current work! I appreciate very much what MSM did for us and I hope that I can come here again".

To get more insight into European business, the Baosteel senior managers visited the European Commission in Brussels, Kersten Europe BV, DSM and the European Headquarter of Arcelor Mittal in Luxembourg. At Arcelor Mittal, they engaged in an interactive session where they were able todiscuss a number of special topics that they requested beforehand, such as environmental protection, automobile steel sheets, steel catenary riser (SCR) and the activities of Arcelor University.

Mr. Yu Jilai, Director of Production Baosteel-NSC Automotive Steel Sheets Co., Ltd. summarized his experiences of the training as follows:

“Throughout the two-week management training program, MSM’s unique teaching methods created an active learning atmosphere – encouraging participation, stimulating critical thinking, facilitating discussion and debate, and inspiring us to apply newly acquired knowledge and theories to our work practices. During our visit to the European Commission as well as various companies, we observed business practices, exchanged experiences and ideas with business executives and policy-makers, gained insights into management information and structure in European companies. This experience is greatly beneficial to my own work.”

During the official opening of the academic year at MSM on 15 September 2014, Mr. Zhu Junsheng, general secretary of CPC committee and Vice-president of Baosteel, praised Baosteel’s collaboration with MSM, which dates back to 2002. Over the past 12 years MSM has trained around 100 Baosteel executives on various management topics.

Baosteel is one of the world’s largest iron and steel manufacturer. Its annual steel output exceeds 40 million tons. In 2012, Baosteel has been recognized jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance in China as the "National Model Enterprise for Technological Innovation” and won the China Charity Award, the top government award in Chinese philanthropy, for the fourth consecutive year. And in 2013, Baosteel was listed among the Fortune Global 500 by the U.S. Fortune magazine for the tenth consecutive year and received the highest credit ranking from the world’s iron and steel enterprises by the Big Three credit rating agencies, namely Standard & Poor's, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.