In July 2012, Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell, Inc., met with a representative of Silver Lake Partners to explore taking his company private. The company, which he had founded in his dorm room as a college freshman and which had made him the youngest Fortune 500 CEO in history, had been the market leader in PC sales in the early 2000s. In recent years, however, the company had been surpassed by competitors and, worse, the PC market was becoming less lucrative, due to overseas competition, longer turnover rates on PCs, and the rise of tablets and smartphones. Michael Dell hoped to respond to by changing shifting the company form its core to a "new Dell" based around "Enterprise Solutions and Software" (such as servers, consulting, and software-as-a-service) and now claimed he needed to take the company private to do so. By the summer of 2013, the Dell board and its shareholders would have to decide whether to accept his offer to take the company private for $13.65 a share. Meanwhile, Carl Icahn bought a large stake in Dell Inc., accused Dell of trying to steal the company, and urged shareholders to rebel and demand a "leveraged recapitalization" instead. This case presents the information the Dell board worked with as it debated its decision.
Clearwater Seafoods, a Canadian shellfish enterprise, has four decades of experience in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. It harvests seafood, processes it and markets it in bulk to large restaurant chains worldwide. The company wants to pursue growth by marketing seafood directly to individual consumers (B2C) in China. The transition from B2B to B2C raises three fundamental questions. How can the company develop and deploy a go-to-market business model with Chinese grocery retailers? How can it balance its focus on margins with the Chinese retailers’ focus on revenues? How can Clearwater establish differentiation as a source of competitive advantage in seafood retailing in China?
City Developments Limited (CDL) has been publishing an annual dedicated sustainability report, in line with the Global Reporting Initiative's reporting guidelines, since 2008. In January 2016, Esther An, chief sustainability officer at CDL, produced the 2015 sustainability report using an integrated reporting approach. She saw the fundamental challenge of integrated reporting as communicating to stakeholders the business and financial impact of the firm's efforts in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) integration. The business environment was also changing as consumers demanded more transparency and regulators required more non-financial disclosure from companies. Leaving external pressures aside, CDL had always taken pride in being a socially responsible company. For over two decades, CDL had embraced sustainability in its corporate philosophy and business strategy. This focus is evident in the management of its operations both as a developer and landlord, and also through its building designs and construction methods. Adhering to the integrated reporting approach will allow a more holistic form of reporting that linked the impact of the firm's social and environmental performance to its financial bottom line.
Clearwater Seafoods, a Canadian shellfish enterprise, has four decades of experience in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. It harvests seafood, processes it and markets it in bulk to large restaurant chains worldwide. The company wants to pursue growth by marketing seafood directly to individual consumers (B2C) in China. The transition from B2B to B2C raises three fundamental questions. How can the company develop and deploy a go-to-market business model with Chinese grocery retailers? How can it balance its focus on margins with the Chinese retailers' focus on revenues? How can Clearwater establish differentiation as a source of competitive advantage in seafood retailing in China?
Explores some of the issues involved in valuing cash flow streams. A simple model is presented that reveals the effect on value of changing assumptions about the appropriate discount rate, the level of profitability, the growth rate of sales, the asset intensity ratio, and the leverage ratio. Helps students address some of the following issues: 1) What is the definition of cash flow? 2) What effects do changes in the discount rate have on valuation? 3) How sensitive is value to changes in assumptions about the underlying characteristics of the cash flow stream? 4) How does growth affect value? 5) How does the use of leverage affect value? 6) What are price-to-earnings ratios? and 7) What factors affect price-to-earnings ratios?
Craig Pitchell is a young executive who has become director of the board at a local childcare centre. He has discovered that other board members do not comply with the by-laws for the centre. He is presenting at a special meeting to oust the current board and replace them with an alternate slate of directors.
Craig Pitchell is a young executive who has become director of the board at a local childcare centre. He has discovered that other board memberships do not comply with the by-laws for the centre. He is presenting at a special meeting to oust the current board and replace them with an alternate slate of directors.
After settling a $78-million lawsuit with a St. Louis woman who was struck by one of its drivers, Domino's Pizza decided to eliminate its 30-minute delivery guarantee and transform its business model through innovations in the areas of technology, social architecture, and operations. The company provided consistency of experience for customers by introducing its Pizza Tracker - a web-based application that allowed customers to track their pizza at each stage of the process - standardizing the layout and processes used in each of its stores, and providing more transparency into employee performance. Students are asked to evaluate how Domino's used technology and innovation to improve efficiency, quality, customer relationship management (CRM), and employee relations as well as assess its change management process.
The case is about a city's water security and draws on the intense debate about the construction of a reservoir in a college town in Virginia in the wake of a record drought. The case highlights the role of public utilities in water provision, illustrates the different positions of various stakeholders, and raises the question of what the appropriate price for water is. It provides stylized facts of water use across sectors and rests on a basic analysis of present and future water demand as well as on an assessment of future water supply. This case is used in Darden's elective, "The Global Economics of Water." It would also work well in courses dealing with the environmental impacts of urban planning."
A new president has been hired to double or triple the size of Charles Chocolates, a high end chocolate producer and retailer in Portland, Maine. The case allows a comprehensive analysis of marketing, manufacturing, human resource, financial and strategic positioning issues in a small company with manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling and Internet operations.
A new president has been hired to double or triple the size of Charles Chocolates, a high end chocolate producer and retailer in Portland, Maine. The case allows a comprehensive analysis of marketing, manufacturing, human resource, financial and strategic positioning issues in a small company with manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling and Internet operations.
Bettina Hein, founder-CEO of Pixability, is meeting with her board of directors to discuss her startup's fundraising prospects and the recent strategic pivot. Though Bettina loves the entrepreneurial exhilaration of "riding a rollercoaster every day," the company's current cash position gives them only a four-month runway. For Bettina, though they can at times be tense, board meetings and their preparation have become an exercise in reflection that gives her encouragement. In her prior startup, SVOX, Bettina learned a lot about managing a board of directors. While she can apply many of those lessons to her experience at Pixability, she's had to continue to develop new practices for portraying the company's progress, and for soliciting advice from her directors while projecting confidence. While preparing for the upcoming meeting, Bettina wonders: How should she structure and lead the meeting? How might her board react to her team's updates? What difficult questions might the board members pose and how should she answer them?
Blue River Technology begins with background on company co-founder Jorge Heraud and the founding story of the enterprise. Blue River was created by Heraud and co-founder Lee Redden, who were both graduate students at Stanford University when they began exploring commercial opportunities for autonomous vehicles employing computer vision technology. The co-founders decided to focus on agricultural applications, with lettuce thinning as an initial target service and larger global row crops as an aspirational goal. The case challenges students to first think through the possible business models that Blue River (BR) could use to serve its target marketplace(s). Then the case walks students through BR's early discussions with Khosla Ventures (KV), a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. KV has a divergent view on how BR should grow and tackle marketplace opportunities, and at the end of the case, Heraud and Redden face a series of decisions as to how they should engage KV and make optimal financing decisions for the business.