With its campus designed by I.M. Pei, European coffee and bottled water, and faculty and students drawn from around the world, Ceibs (China Europe International Business School) in Shanghai symbolises the striking evolution of the globalisation of business education in Asia.

In just a few years, rapidly rising demand for MBAs and other business qualifications in the region has led to a shift from simply exporting students to business schools in the west to developing greater local offerings, often enhanced by international partnerships. Now a third phase of consolidation and the creation of satellites of Asian institutions abroad is under way.

Dipak Jain, the newly appointed European president of Ceibs, reflects the trends: brought up in a poor Indian family, he was recruited as a postgraduate to the University of Texas at Dallas, and became dean of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago before shifting his focus back east to run first Insead and then the Sasin Institute of Business Administration in Thailand.