With the world's population estimated to grow by 40% by 2050, an additional supply of grains, meat and dairy products would be required. Concerns over the global food supply have increased. Also, with China's growing urbanisation and increase in per capita incomes, there was additional pressure on the demand for food products. However, with arable land being fixed and in short supply the constraint on the supply side was more acute. The issue of food shortages was taken a lot more seriously in China than it was in other countries around the world, because the Chinese government's memories of the Great Famine in China between 1958 and 1961 were still too recent to take the matter lightly.
In 2011, SecondMarket was an online platform that facilitated secondary transactions of illiquid assets, including private company stock. This case explores reasons for the decline in small-cap IPOs in the United States from the 1990s to the 2000s and how the emergence of SecondMarket provided liquidity to privately held companies like iContact, an email and social marketing software-as-a-service [SaaS] company.
Two months after a successful launch In November 2009, the cofounders of Rent the Runway (RTR), a website that rented designer dresses, are debating whether to grow their startup at a measured pace and focus on improving operational effectiveness, or raise a new round of venture capital sooner than originally planned. Raising more venture capital would allow RTR to aggressively expand its inventory and customer acquisition efforts, in order serve a broader range of customer segments with a wider selection of products, (e.g., accessories, maternity wear).
In early 2008, Campbell Soup Company, a global food and beverage enterprise, is experimenting with a new way of understanding the mindset of its consumers. This has been prompted by the stagnation in sales of its soup products in the United States, its home market, where the soups category has matured. For decades, the company’s focus in marketing research has been on tracking how the end users, having bought its soup products at stores, consume them at home. But now, it is keen on tracking the shoppers while they are searching the retail aisles. The company is planning to deploy the techniques of consumer neuroscience, a relatively new discipline, for this purpose.
This note introduces the concept of risk or merger arbitrage. Risk arbitrage is an investing method that attempts to capitalize on announced transactions pertaining to mergers, spin-offs, takeovers, liquidations, and corporate restructuring. The arbitrageur attempts to create riskless profit by simultaneous purchases and/or sales of assets that are part of an announced transaction. In the note, we outline the basics types of deals — including cash mergers, stock mergers, cash-stock deals and embedded options — and the methods to evaluate their profitability. The note also provides information on using Bloomberg’s mergers and acquisitions database and the Bloomberg M&A Analysis function to track pending transactions in the early and mid-2000s.
In 2011, Celeritas is a leading data communications company in the crowded, highly competitive, and ever-evolving enterprise-network optimization market. Having experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2003, Celeritas has recently seen sales decline and has begun to lose market share along with its status as the top player. The CEO, concerned about several problems that may have contributed to this decline, engages an organizational development consultant who leads the firm's senior vice presidents through a two-day offsite exercise in team building. A followup meeting with a lower level of management raises questions about the effectiveness of those efforts.
The president and chief executive officer (CEO) of a provincial auto club is assessing opportunities to grow his organization in light of industry consolidation and punitive changes in allocating of national operating costs. The auto club has diversified from automobile towing and travel services into insurance, package travel, automobile sales and service. However, his vision to the upcoming board of directors' meeting calls for a 300 per cent increase in operating revenues over next 10 years. Without a larger critical mass, the auto club cannot support its allocated costs of branded national and international products. The CEO's challenge is where are the growth opportunities.
Jessica Herrin, founder and CEO of Stella & Dot, started her entrepreneurial career as the co-founder of Wedding Channel, an experience which laid the foundation for her most recent venture, a direct sales jewelry business. Jessica's main goal in launching the business was to provide women with an alternate career platform to run their own business under their own terms. The case describes the evolution of her company, from its modest start in Jessica's living room through the birth of two children, to annual revenues of $100 million in 2010, just 8 years after its founding. The case additionally describes the direct sales approach as an alternate to the more conventional sales platforms with which students are familiar.
Robert Venter, second-generation Chief Executive (CE) of family-owned Allied Electronics Corporation Ltd (Altron), considered the pros and cons of more clearly linking the firm's compensation system to sustainability performance. In June 2011, Altron, a conglomerate headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, controlled more than 200 companies in Africa, Europe, the US, the UK, Australia, and the Far East. More than 14,000 employees designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed a range of telecommunications, electronics, power electronics, and information technology systems and products. Having made a clear commitment to sustainable development, Venter was confident that the commitment was shared across the senior management team. However, there appeared to be more acceptance in the operating units for meeting financial targets than for meeting sustainability targets. Did the existing incentive structure send the correct message about the sustainability-oriented corporate strategy? Looking at the reshaped strategic themes, Venter considered the pros and cons of more clearly linking the firm's compensation system to sustainability performance.
This case focuses on a significant problem faced by county-owned Prairie Health Service’s administrators: What could be done to reduce multiple billings and other redundancies among the four divisions of the organization? The administrators’ goal was to implement an integrated records management system that would streamline the registration and billing processes for patients, thereby increasing efficiency and timeliness, as well as reduce financial losses. While this was a fiscally responsible goal for the organization, the records management software package selected by the CEO was inadequate for the task. Rather than listen to the recommendations of his division administrators who had spent considerable time researching potential software, the CEO seemed to be basing his selection decision on the personal relationship he had developed with sales representatives from one of the software firms.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language built into Microsoft Office and other applications. In Microsoft Excel, VBA can be used to develop models, simplify repetitive tasks, and increase user-friendliness. This note is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the building blocks of VBA programming. It is intended as an introductory reading for students with no prior experience in VBA programming.
This exercise assesses one's exposure to the rest of the world's peoples. A series of worksheets require the respondents to check off the number and names of countries they have visited and the corresponding percentage of world population which each country represents. By summing a group's collective exposure to the world's people, the result will inevitably be the recognition that together they have seen much, even if individually some have seen little. The teaching note provides assignments and discussion questions which look at: why there is such a high variability in individual profiles; the implications of each profile for one's business career; and, what it would take for the respondent to change his/her profile. For marketers, it underscores the need to gather greater base knowledge about opportunities abroad.
A toy retailer plans to order a new product from an untested supplier for the winter holiday season. This exercise provides an opportunity for students to construct a model to determine optimal order quantity when demand is not known. Profits are calculated based on wholesale pricing, revenue-sharing, profit-sharing, and buyback contracts.
This technical note introduces business students to the concepts of modeling discrete choice (e.g., a consumer purchasing brand A versus brand B) using logistic regression and maximum-likelihood estimation. It draws the analogy between modeling discrete choice and building a regression model with a dummy dependent variable and on an example illustrates the need for estimating the probability of a choice rather than the choice itself, which leads to a special kind of regression - logistic regression. The note presents the concepts of utility and a random utility choice model, of which the logistic regression model is the most commonly used. It shows how choice probabilities can be constructed from utilities leading to the logit model. It then presents the maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) method of fitting the logit model to the choice data. Working through a detailed example using Solver and accompanying spreadsheet model, the note gives students deep understanding for how MLE works and how it is similar and different to the standard least-squared estimation in linear regression. The note concludes by presenting the results of estimation using StatTools, a commercial statistical software. The note avoids the use of heavy mathematical machinery but still requires rudimentary knowledge of exponent and logarithmic functions, probability, and optimization with Solver, as well as familiarity with the "standard" linear regression. Applications include building of models for consumer choice, estimating price elasticity, price optimization, product versioning, product line design, and conjoint analysis.
The case studies the decision of the security services corporation Brink's Company to spin-off its home security division from the rest of the company. The decision followed intense pressure on the company by three activist hedge funds who felt that Brink's was chronically undervalued and the individual businesses were worth more than the combined company. The company resisted the decision for over a year before agreeing to the break up. The case follows the argument made by the company and each of the investors. It also describes the actions by the company to convince its shareholders of the merits of keeping the company together, as well as the actions the activist investors took to get the attention of management, the board, and other investors. The businesses, secure transportation and home security monitoring, are described from both a business strategy and a financial perspective so that the potential value of different value enhancing options can be analyzed.
A hedge fund is deciding whether to liquidate its position in Apollo Group, a for-profit education firm, in light of significant political and macro-economic uncertainty facing the industry. As part of the investment analysis a complete discounted cash flow analysis must be performed.
This case focuses on the Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a novel payment program designed to incentivize providers to deliver less costly, high quality health care. Under the AQC, offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, providers received a fixed-dollar budget to cover all care provided to a specific patient population, as well as incentive payments for quality. The AQC was piloted in 2009 by a handful of provider organizations, including a group of physicians belonging to the Lowell General Physician Hospital Organization (LGPHO). The case describes the LGPHO physicians' experience during their first two years under the AQC, allowing students to assess the group's performance as well as potential challenges in the remaining three years of the contract and future contracts and the AQC's value as part of the solution to untenably high U.S. health care costs.
This case deals with the challenges faced at L’Oseraie, a nursing home located in the northeast of France. The director of L’Oseraie had to meet her new boss and brief him on the organization’s challenges while offering suggestions. A key obstacle involved employee motivation and engagement, particularly after a recent absenteeism episode. Furthermore, the lack of health care staff in France meant that employees might need to be sourced from abroad, perhaps from Eastern Europe or the French-speaking countries of North Africa. How could the director implement a strategy that would alleviate the day-to-day problems of the nursing home?