Porto Business School

About Porto Business School

Porto Business School is the business school of U.Porto, the largest Portuguese university. Its unique governance structure also involves top business leaders and 25 large corporations, ensuring a practical approach to management teaching. The school is currently listed on the FT Executive Education worldwide ranking.

Porto Business School is rapidly building its international image, striving to become one of the most reputed European business schools. Significant growth is expected within 3-5 years with state-of-the-art new facilities expected to be inaugurated in 2013.

Our 14-month full-time MBA is currently the most international of all accredited MBA programmes in Portugal, with around 60% of foreign students.

Most challenging achievements and the future

A good example of the long-lasting success of our MBA programme is the fact that 4 out of the 20 firms currently listed on Euronext Lisbon PSI20 Stock Index have CEOs that are our MBA Alumni. More recently, the Magellan MBA students have won several international awards, such as the 1st Place on John Molson Case Competition 2011 (Canada), or the 1st Prize on Idea to Product Competition 2010 (U.S.). The school’s MBA provision has meanwhile been awarded both AMBA and EPAS accreditations, for its inherent quality and commitment to continuous improvement.

The Magellan MBA shall consolidate its international growth and positioning by fostering several teaching and research collaborative projects with leading institutions, adding to existing ones (e.g. RSM, FDC, IE, LBS), as well as by continually seeking improvement and innovation for its curriculum and student services. Further accreditations for the school and its programmes are also under way.

Differentiating factors

Porto Business School has several bilateral agreements with international top business schools for student exchange and provides international weeks that combine classes, visits to companies and networking events with local executives.

The MBA two-month long internships have recently included projects with NGOs in Mozambique, Haiti, and Mali, showing that corporate and social responsibility are deeply embedded in the school’s culture. The programme has a strong focus on the development of soft-skills such as communication, team management, leadership and negotiation.

As a result of innovative and successful initiatives such as the Talent Show, the Followers Programme or the Mentoring Programme, employability statistics are very strong, with global corporations and organizations as usual employers (e.g. McKinsey, Li & Fung, Galp Energia, Sonae).

Every year, Porto Business School hosts the Leadership Grand Conference, joining over 1000 executives with some of the most influential management thinkers of our time, such as Benjamin Zander, Garry Kasparov or Kjell Nordström.

Unique selling points

• The best value-for-money internationally accredited programme in Western Europe,
• Interaction with 8000 Alumni (40 countries) and global Corporations,
• Porto – a featured Lonely Planet Top10 Best-Value 2012 destination!