London Business School has won the overall award in the European Case Awards for the third time in the history of the Awards with “Red Bull: The Anti-Brand Brand” by Nirmalya Kumar, Nadar Tavassoli and Sophie Linguri Coughlan. The subject characterised 2009, a year of recession in which cases about the food and drinks industries dominated.

Nirmalya Kumar, Professor of Marketing, is emerging as one of the most successful case authors in the European Case Awards. He had won two awards in 2009 for London Business School and single categories with other co-authors in 2005, 2002 and 2001 while based at IMD.

London Business School also took a category award in the production and operations management category with a case on the groceries distributor Ocado, authored by Mark Frohlich of London Business School and Ken K Boyer of the Broad College of Business, Michigan State University.

IMD sweeps awards

This year, IMD was the most successful school in terms of the number of awards achieved, winning three of the nine category awards with cases on Nestlé, the fishing industry and ABN AMRO - one of the other represented topical business areas: banking.

Other winners

INSEAD won two category awards, one on the Ford Ka in collaboration with Singapore Management University and one on Michelin.

One award each went to: AESE - Escola de Direcção e Negócios a first time winner with a case about The Grameen Bank, a provider of micro-finance to people in developing countries; Cranfield University School of Management together with EABIS (European Academy of Business in Society) for a case on the values behind the ‘innocent’ drinks brand; and to IESE Business School for a case on the Apple iPhone.

The Awards will be presented at a ceremony in London in September.