Fontainebleau, 4 May 2004

Dear All,

Back in Fontainebleau after a short, and highly needed, spring break in Barcelona. Last week was pretty crazy with 6 exams in only 4 days! (Hope you all had a happy Easter holiday by the way, there is no such thing here).  Fortunately, the majority of people seemed more relaxed about the exams this time - at least all those who knew they were now comfortably above the bottom 10% who will need to retake a couple of courses to increase their GPA (grade point average) to pass. Except for one, I think I did ok, although not as good as last time. As long as I stay in the best half, I am perfectly happy though.

The workload, at least the number of exams, should be going down from now on. We still have to take 6 courses this period, but there are fewer exams and three of the courses are electives, which should be more fun. I have selected:

• Negotiation analysis - which I have been looking forward to since the beginning
• Mergers and Acquisitions; and
• Business Strategy and Competition Policy

 In addition we have

• Macroeconomics (which by mistake I did not exempt)
• International Political Analysis
• Information Systems & Management

As the number of students allowed in each of the elective course is limited, courses are assigned through an auction (one round sealed bid), where all students are awarded 200 points. The price of each course is then determined so that the demand equals supply. Most courses end up being free, but negotiation analysis e.g. went for 85 points. You can also bid for going to Wharton for one period. This year the ~50 places went for 190 points! As our Dean put it, this would suggest that these guys basically came to INSEAD to go to Wharton J.

Enough about school. As mentioned, I just came back from Barcelona where I spend 4 days together with a group of 10 other INSEAD students. Good fun as you can imagine. We are also having a new guy moving into our house. A German guy named Alex. He is replacing Jerry who went to our Singapore Campus for this period. I haven't ruled out the possibility to go for the last period in Nov/Dec but most likely I'll stay here. I really did not want to miss spring in Fontainebleau. I have been happy with Samois (the place where I live) all along, but now when it is all green it is really quit extraordinary. I'll try to post some updated pictures on the website over the next couple of weeks.

Let me close with a few stories to illustrate my previous remarks regarding the unique French customer service. First, my cellular was shut down because my bank had refused an invoice. This was obviously my mistake as there was no money on my French account. However, I was surprised to discover that Orange could just shut down my phone without first sending me a letter. I doubt this would be allowed back in Denmark. Last week then it was the Gaz! This time because we had not been registered as a new user but again without any prior warning. All though it was turned back on again the next day, I am grateful it wasn't back in January as our house is heated with Gaz! But it sure is a very powerful way to make your customers pay their bills!

All the best greetings from Fontainebleau

Jonas

PS: I am aware that some of you have missed some of my previous updates. Sorry. If you are interested, these are available at www.jonasholm.com under INSEAD, where I have also posted some pictures with more to come.