Imperial College Business School
Imperial College Business School (formerly Tanaka Business School) is the business school of Imperial College London. The business school was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004. Over 90 percent of the faculty are from outside of the United Kingdom, with alumni in 124 countries. History. The business school can trace its earliest origins to 1955, when the Operational Research/Management Science (ORMS) course started at Imperial in the Production Engineering Section of the Mechanical Engineering Department. There were only 5 students enrolled when the programme commenced in October 1955 at 14 Prince's Gardens, with  an arrangement in place for students to be able to attend one-day intensive economics and accounting courses for one or two terms at the London School of Economics. The agreement became a reciprocal one lasting until 1966. In the mid-1960s, there was even the idea of creating a joint School of Administration, Economics and Technology (between Imperial and LSE) but this was ultimately rejected in favour of a new graduate school of business being started in the capital. Imperial and LSE acted as co-sponsors in the establishment of this new school, named the London Graduate School of Business  Studies and now known as the London Business School. Accordingly, the London Business School's first academic planning board included the heads of Imperial College and LSE. From the ORMS course, a Department of Management Science (DMS) was established at Imperial in 1971, under the leadership of Samuel Eilon. The department was composed of staff and students from Imperial's Industrial Sociology Unit and at its inception had 15 academic staff and around 60 students on an MSc course. Over subsequent years the department grew and its focus shifted towards business studies. In 1987 the Department of Management Science was  merged with Imperial's Department of Social and Economic Studies to form a new School of Management, based in 2 large Victorian houses on Exhibition Road. David Norbun was the first Director. The School launched a new three-year part-time Executive MBA course. Tanaka Business School. In 2000 Gary A. Tanaka, an alumnus of Imperial, agreed to make a substantial donation to the college. It was decided to utilise the donation, together with other resources, to fund the transformation of the School of Management into a research-led business school. Tanaka ultimately donated a total of £27 million  to Imperial, of which £25 million went to the new business school, in what was at the time the largest single donation to any European business school. The new Tanaka Business School was launched in 2003, with David Begg as Director. Imperial College Business School. In August 2008 the school was renamed Imperial College Business School because the old name did not strongly emphasise its association with the College. The school's accommodation was subsequently named "the Tanaka Building". An alternative speculation is that the college changed the name of the school to distance itself from Tanaka's fraudulent  activities after he was tried and found guilty of conspiracy, securities fraud and investment adviser fraud in the same year. In March 2013 the British hedge fund manager and Imperial alumnus Alan Howard donated £20.1 million to fund the establishment of a finance research centre, the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis. Campus. The business school is located on Exhibition Road at Imperial's South Kensington campus. This was built on the site of the Goldsmith's wing of the Royal School of Mines, incorporating the 19th century vaults of the older building. The new building was designed by  Foster and Partners with engineering consultancy from Buro Happold. It was constructed between September 2002 and June 2004 at a cost of £15.7 million, and was opened in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II. It has 639 seats in seven lecture theatres and desk space for 70 PhD students. The building was renamed the Tanaka Building in August 2008. The business school also operates out of a secondary building, 53 Prince's Gate, also in South Kensington. From the 2020–2021 Academic year, some teaching and research will operate from Imperial's White City campus. Taught programmes. Postgraduate. Imperial College Business  School offers the following postgraduate programmes: MBA (Imperial MBA, Imperial Executive MBA & Weekend MBA, Global MBA (online), Master's programmes, Joint Master's programmes, and a Doctoral programme. Undergraduate. The school offers joint honours undergraduate degrees in collaboration with Imperial College's departments of Biochemistry, Biology, Biomedicine and Chemistry, and an intercalated BSc in the third or fourth year of medical degrees for medical students at Imperial College and other medical schools. Both of these involve spending a year in the Business School. The Business School also offers modules to students from other departments at Imperial College via the Business  for Professionals of Engineering and Science programme. Research and doctoral programme. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), Imperial's business school had the highest proportion of ‘world-leading’ (4*) and ‘internationally excellent’ (3*) research in the UK (92%), ahead of the London School of Economics at 89%. Doctoral students joining the business school's 5-year PhD programme are associated with one of the following research groups: Admission. Entrance to the PhD programme for new doctoral researchers at the business school is around 5% each year, with an annual intake of around 15 students. Doctoral theses. Since 2008 , 100 candidates have successfully completed their doctoral degrees at the business school via the submission and acceptance of a research thesis. These are held in physical form at Imperial's central library and can also be accessed electronically using the university's online repository, Spiral. Executive education. The Business School offers Executive Education programmes in Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Health and Finance. Programmes are split into short programmes for individuals, custom programmes for companies, and online programmes. Rankings. Imperial College Business School is ranked 19th in the QS Global MBA ranking 2020, 44th in the Financial Times Global MBA ranking  2021, and is not included in The Economist's 2019 ranking of the top 100 full time MBAs globally; it is also ranked 13 among European business schools in 2019–20 by Bloomberg Businessweek. In the QS Global MBA rankings by specialisation, Imperial is ranked 2nd for MBA's specialising in entrepreneurship, 20th for specialisation in consulting, 28th for specialisation in finance, 22nd for information management, 24th for specialisation in marketing, 14th for specialisation in operations management and 22nd for specialisation in technology. It was also ranked 5th for its master's degrees in management and in business analytics. For the  topic of entrepreneurship, it has ranked 1st in Europe within "Bloomberg", "Financial Times", "QS Global MBA Rankings", and "Reuters -The World's Most Innovative Universities".