On 3 November 2022, the Faculty of Finance of the City University of Macao held the Finance Seminar Series Workshop [8] “Finance Boardgame Experience – Who is the Substantial Shareholder?” at the Ho Yin Convention Centre. Mr. Ray Chan, guest lecturer of Faculty of Finance, City University of Macau, was invited to host a boardgame. Guests attending this workshop include Dean Adrian Cheung and Associate Dean Eva Khong, City University of Macau.

Before starting the game, Mr. Chan introduced the instruction of the game. The game requires players to strategically invest in the hotel sector, and strive for more equity. As students acquire more assets, some mergers and acquisitions also begin to appear. Students can choose a hotel to go public, retain or sell their shares, so as to obtain the corresponding dividend, and then use the newly obtained funds to invest in other hotels. During the period of merger and acquisition, the shareholders of the acquired hotel can exchange their shares for the shares of the hotel in a ratio of 2:1 to become the shareholders of the new hotel in a disguised way. As the new hotel grows, the shareholders of the acquired hotel also benefit.

After the introduction, the students were divided into several groups. At the beginning of the game, everyone chose the most favorable development area, until the yellow hotel was acquired by the orange hotel, and the orange hotel became the dominant situation. (Under the rules of the antitrust game, hotels with more than 11 sites cannot be acquired.) The major shareholders of the orange hotel were Mr. Chan and a female student. Then, the blue hotel successively acquired the equity of the remaining 5 hotels in the later stage. As a result, the blue hotel finally overtook the orange hotel to become the largest hotel through the strategy of “alliance with each other”.

After the boardgame, Mr. Chan shared his experience of the game with the students. It is not necessary to invest in a single hotel, but can invest in multiple hotels at the same time, and earn dividends when being acquired by becoming the first three major shareholders. Diversification can help to get dividends, but diversifying too much may result in losing the position as a major shareholder.

Mr. Chan expressed the hope that through this boardgame activity, students could learn the complex operation of securities market, and have a more specific understanding of financial operations such as listing, merger and acquisition, stock exchange, dividend and delisting, so as to enhance students' interest in learning finance. The students also expressed that they gained a lot from the experience of the boardgame, which could consolidate the financial knowledge they learned in class. They looked forward to participating in more financial-related boardgame experiences in the future.