George Washington is perhaps the most well-known of the U.S.'s founding fathers because of his political and military achievements. However, Washington also operated a number of successful business ventures out of his Mount Vernon estate, and he became a landowner on the American frontier. Washington's life and career serve as a lens for understanding the development of the early American economy. Washington was entrepreneurial both economically and politically. He played a central role in helping to structure the new country's national government and developed a number of precedents as the country's first executive.
In November 2013, with less than 10 months of cash on hand, Tom Leung, the founder and CEO of Yabbly, must decide where to focus his resources. His startup, a question and answer application for shopping decisions, had benefited from a strong showing at the SXSW Accelerator competition and had a dedicated and engaged user base. However, Leung knew that the current growth trajectory would not lead them to the milestones needed to receive an additional round of financing. Leung must decide whether to continue pursuing user acquisition experiments, explore other product ideas, or begin searching for a potential acquirer to achieve a "soft landing" for his team and his investors.
When Ashmark Corporation’s largest supplier, Red Star Castings (Red Star), was forced to declare bankruptcy, Ashmark had to develop and implement a contingency plan, while also appeasing its customers, who were growing increasingly impatient for their parts to arrive. Since Red Star closed, Ashmark had been late on 200 units of production due to missing components. Although this figure represented less than 1 per cent of the company’s total monthly shipments, things were likely to get more difficult, especially with the loss of key employees due to the stressful situation. In addition, the new supplier was having trouble bringing the tooling online, there were delays in the qualification and testing process, and the modest amount of inventory built up in advance of the bankruptcy had diminished. As Ashmark looked to move forwards, it would need to develop a much better sense of how to manage supply chain risk.
On April 24, 2013 the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Over 1,100 people were killed in the worst industrial accident since the Union Carbide plant gas leak in Bhopal, India. Most of the victims worked for garment factories, whose primary clients were European, US and Canadian firms. Export contracts to such firms had helped Bangladesh become the world's second largest clothing exporter. Rana Plaza was not the first tragedy to occur in Bangladesh's garment industry, and without intervention, more might follow. International brand owners, domestic and foreign governments, labor unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), stepped up to discuss their responsibilities for improving conditions for Bangladeshi garment workers.
In May 2013, senior managers of GSO Capital Partners, an $80 billion credit-oriented investment firm owned by The Blackstone Group, are considering what to do next with their investment in the senior secured debt of Eastman Kodak Company. Once a great company and an icon of American business, Kodak had fallen on desperately hard economic times as its traditional business of manufacturing cameras and photographic film had all but disappeared with the rise of digital photography, causing its annual revenues to plummet from $13 billion to $6 billion, and its stock price to fall by 95%, between 2003 and 2011. Having taken various positions in Kodak's debt during the previous four years, GSO is now faced with a major decision. Under the company's recently proposed plan of reorganization, secured creditors were to be given 85% of the company's common stock, but unsecured creditors objected to the plan. Now, six months later, GSO has brought an amended plan to the table, under which it would commit to backstop a $406 million equity rights offering that would be made directly to all the unsecured creditors. This offer might bring the objecting creditors on board, but could also require an additional large capital commitment by GSO, which was already heavily invested in a highly troubled business that many viewed as a "melting ice cube."
Brazilian retail markets had been a tempting arena for growth-minded companies since the country instituted democratic reforms in the 1980s. To raise capital for continued expansion, AbÃlio Diniz, the billionaire chairman of Brazil's number-one retailer, Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição (CBD), entered a long-term agreement in 2005 to transfer control of the retail empire to the CEO of the French retailer Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA in 2012. As the date for the planned takeover drew near, Diniz tried to get around his agreement with Casino by engaging in secret negotiations to create a new, Brazil-based partnership with Carrefour SA, Casino's retailing archrival in France. Drawing on his network of influential advisors and investors and his close ties with government, Diniz secretly struck a plan to secure government-backed private funding to merge CBD with Carrefour's Brazilian operations and install himself at the helm of a new retailing giant with a commanding Brazilian market share. Once discovered, the proposal sparked a fierce counterattack by Casino's chairman, Jean-Charles Naouri. Marshaling an army of lawyers, Naouri filed a request for international arbitration, raised Casino's stake in CBD, and sought and won a French court order to raid Carrefour headquarters for documents. Naouri was able to enforce the 2005 agreement after persuading Brazilian officials to abandon their plans to support a CBD-Carrefour merger. The battle led to a permanent split between former partners Naouri and Diniz-and to Diniz's eventual exit from the Brazilian retailing empire he had built. Students will explore how weak corporate governance at CBD and in Brazil in general, as well as political and cultural differences between the two leaders and their respective nations, helped ignite one of the biggest intercontinental boardroom showdowns in history.
It is April 2014, and the small investment management firm Elke Schumpeter founded twelve years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, is performing well. The fund, Schumpeter Finanzberatung GmbH (SF), has pursued a low-cost market timing (tactical asset allocation) strategy that targets a mix of 60% in the equity market index and 40% in German treasury bills (T-bills) but that also strategically changes the mix in an attempt to beat the passive benchmark. The fund has grown to just over €400 million and since 2006 has outperformed the passive benchmark by 98 basis points. At the suggestion of some investors, Schumpeter is now considering expanding her firm's investment thesis to include investments in individual stocks. She has investigated two firms: ThyssenKrupp AG and Deoleo SA. Before making the decision to invest in individual stocks, Schumpeter needs to decide how to measure the risk of those investments. Students are asked to measure the risk of both individual investments (stocks) as well as the risk of SF's overall portfolio. The case provides a way to explain the intuition behind the capital asset pricing model and to describe the distinction between idiosyncratic (diversifiable) risk and systematic (non-diversifiable) risk.
In spring 2009, North Dakota experienced some of the worst flooding in state history. This case describes how the state's National Guard responded by mobilizing thousands of its troops and working in concert with personnel and equipment from six other states as well as an array of federal, state, and local stakeholders. Specifically, after providing background on the North Dakota National Guard and the state's susceptibility to flooding, the case captures how Guard officials developed and practiced a plan ("Operation Rollback Water") to respond to the floods and how they then had to adapt that plan as the crisis escalated and conditions changed. In particular, the Guard had to work with a large amount of federal resources that arrived amid the crisis, it had to respond to demands for extensive and rapid assistance from a range of municipalities, and it had to endure a prolonged event that taxed Guard members in the field and the operations and management team that supported them. The case concludes with an epilogue that describes how the Guard applied the lessons it learned from the 2009 floods in response to a similar disaster in 2011.
In spring 2009, North Dakota experienced some of the worst flooding in state history. This case describes how the state's National Guard responded by mobilizing thousands of its troops and working in concert with personnel and equipment from six other states as well as an array of federal, state, and local stakeholders. Specifically, after providing background on the North Dakota National Guard and the state's susceptibility to flooding, the case captures how Guard officials developed and practiced a plan ("Operation Rollback Water") to respond to the floods and how they then had to adapt that plan as the crisis escalated and conditions changed. In particular, the Guard had to work with a large amount of federal resources that arrived amid the crisis, it had to respond to demands for extensive and rapid assistance from a range of municipalities, and it had to endure a prolonged event that taxed Guard members in the field and the operations and management team that supported them. The case concludes with an epilogue that describes how the Guard applied the lessons it learned from the 2009 floods in response to a similar disaster in 2011.
In spring 2009, North Dakota experienced some of the worst flooding in state history. This case describes how the state's National Guard responded by mobilizing thousands of its troops and working in concert with personnel and equipment from six other states as well as an array of federal, state, and local stakeholders. Specifically, after providing background on the North Dakota National Guard and the state's susceptibility to flooding, the case captures how Guard officials developed and practiced a plan ("Operation Rollback Water") to respond to the floods and how they then had to adapt that plan as the crisis escalated and conditions changed. In particular, the Guard had to work with a large amount of federal resources that arrived amid the crisis, it had to respond to demands for extensive and rapid assistance from a range of municipalities, and it had to endure a prolonged event that taxed Guard members in the field and the operations and management team that supported them. The case concludes with an epilogue that describes how the Guard applied the lessons it learned from the 2009 floods in response to a similar disaster in 2011.
In August 2013, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) shocked many in the airline industry by filing a lawsuit to block the merger of American Airlines and US Airways on the grounds that the merger would reduce competition. The two airlines had announced their intention to merge in February, making way for the creation of the largest airline in the world. The new airline would carry roughly 200 million passengers a year, employ more than 100,000 workers, and have total revenues of nearly $40 billion. The American Airlines-US Airways merger was only the latest, albeit the largest, in a recent spate of airline mergers. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the airline industry had been plagued by economic recession, high fuel prices, record losses and bankruptcies. Starting in the mid-2000s, airline executives responded with an aggressive program of consolidation. Mega deals, such as the merger of Delta and Northwest (in 2008), United and Continental (2010), and, Southwest and AirTran (2011), had dramatically reshaped the industry. If approved by federal authorities, the merger between American Airlines and US Airways would leave four major airlines (American, Delta, United and Southwest) in control of 80 percent of the domestic market, down from nine major carriers in 2005. Part A of this case summarizes the historical ups and downs of the volatile US airline industry, the concerns raised by the DOJ and the responses of American Airlines and US Airways, and asks students to weigh the evidence and determine if the advantages of combining the two airlines outweigh the potential harm to consumers. The case sequel describes how the DOJ eventually settled the lawsuit with the airlines, after American agreed to divest slots and gates at several airports in November 2013.
This sequel accompanies case number 2044.0. In August 2013, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) shocked many in the airline industry by filing a lawsuit to block the merger of American Airlines and US Airways on the grounds that the merger would reduce competition. The two airlines had announced their intention to merge in February, making way for the creation of the largest airline in the world. The new airline would carry roughly 200 million passengers a year, employ more than 100,000 workers, and have total revenues of nearly $40 billion. The American Airlines-US Airways merger was only the latest, albeit the largest, in a recent spate of airline mergers. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the airline industry had been plagued by economic recession, high fuel prices, record losses and bankruptcies. Starting in the mid-2000s, airline executives responded with an aggressive program of consolidation. Mega deals, such as the merger of Delta and Northwest (in 2008), United and Continental (2010), and, Southwest and AirTran (2011), had dramatically reshaped the industry. If approved by federal authorities, the merger between American Airlines and US Airways would leave four major airlines (American, Delta, United and Southwest) in control of 80 percent of the domestic market, down from nine major carriers in 2005. Part A of this case summarizes the historical ups and downs of the volatile US airline industry, the concerns raised by the DOJ and the responses of American Airlines and US Airways, and asks students to weigh the evidence and determine if the advantages of combining the two airlines outweigh the potential harm to consumers. The case sequel describes how the DOJ eventually settled the lawsuit with the airlines, after American agreed to divest slots and gates at several airports in November 2013.