At the start of 2010, major global iron ore producer Vale must choose which of three currencies in which to issue new bonds. While generally a good time for firms to issue debt, market conditions varied across countries and currencies. Students must calculate a hedged cost of funds for each currency and must explore the conditions that give rise to differences in those costs.
At the University of Wyoming, home games played by the men’s basketball team generated significant revenues for the athletics department through ticket and concession sales. With the 2009-2010 season ending, it was time to forecast revenues for the upcoming season. Even though ticket prices were already set, providing a revenue forecast was difficult, as the schedule of home games for the 2010-2011 season was not yet known, and both ticket and concession sales for each game were uncertain. A director of business operations for the athletics department needed to review data from the four most recent seasons and determine the best way to forecast revenues for the upcoming season.
The Tim Hortons Brier is the annual Canadian men’s national curling championship. In the case, students will assume the role of Peter Inch, chair of the 2011 Brier Host Committee, to create and finalize the promotional plan for the 2011 Brier, to be held in London, Ontario. Inch’s objectives are two-fold: i) create interest for the event and the sport of curling and ii) execute a safe and profitable event.
During the summer of 1998, Bob Aston and his partners, all bankers, spent many days discussing their plans to start a bank in southeastern Virginia, United States. Deregulation was transforming the banking industry. In Virginia, mergers and acquisitions in the industry had led to the emergence of large banks that had headquarters in other states. Aston felt that banking as he knew it was disappearing. However, before they could start a bank, Aston and his partners faced many questions and decisions: How would they raise the capital? Who would the bank serve? How would they compete with the larger banks that had emerged due to the deregulation? <br><br><br><br>The decisions they made at the founding had a lasting effect on TowneBank. This became evident a decade later as financial institutions around the country experienced a severe crisis that was triggered by exposure to risky mortgages, while TowneBank remained relatively unscathed. However, the management team had to consider several issues as the crisis unfolded. Should they accept the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds that the U.S. Treasury had offered to banks (even those that were unlikely to fail and were adequately capitalized)? How could they ensure TowneBank’s growth? Should they acquire distressed banks in the local market?
November 29, 2010, was “Cyber Monday,” one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, with the potential to approach $1 billion in online sales in North America. The chief designer of fashion company Donna Karan New York (DKNY) was facing a difficult situation. On this particular Cyber Monday, activists for the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had posted simultaneous messages on DKNY’s Facebook page. Anyone viewing the page could not fail to discern the “DK Bunny Butcher” message. This action by PETA was the culmination of several years, beginning in 2005, of attempting to convince DKNY to stop using fur in its collections. This November 29 message was a sharp reminder to both DKNY and its Cyber Monday customers that, up to this point, the company had refused to stop using fur. It was available to be viewed by DKNY’s over 200,000 Facebook fans as well as millions of online Cyber Monday shoppers. The chief designer was unsure how to respond: on one hand was the desire to clearly explain the use of fur, but on the other was the desire to avoid escalating the publicity surrounding the matter. She needed an immediate strategy that would retain her brand’s image and protect future sales.
The owner of a large hardware, furniture, and building centre faced a dilemma regarding how to manage the upcoming wage review process. After two consecutive years of frozen wages, employees were impatient for financial progress, but there was no extra money in the budget. It was possible to pump savings from upcoming process improvement initiatives into wage increases. However, the owner had limited motivation to channel hard-won funds to underperforming employees. On the other hand, he was eager to reward the people who added value. Yet a plan that rewarded only some employees could result in an angry backlash. He had to decide if he wanted to divert the savings into compensation and, if so, he needed an effective distribution plan.
In this case a consultant to pension funds ponders the unique opportunities and risks she faces as she considers adding real estate to the fund's portfolio for the first time. While the fund already owns REITs, its trustees believe that direct real estate investment could offer protection against the threat of inflation. But the category of real estate includes a wide range of distinct subclasses, including office, retail, industrial, hotel, and rental apartments. In analyzing the situation, students must determine which of these sectors provides the best hedge against inflation, and the risks and returns of the asset class as a whole.
This case concerns an executive who must estimate the demand for Kodak Express outlets in various developing countries based on socioeconomic and demographic data about the countries. The case requires students to think about how to transform data on a national scale (GDP per capita, population, income distribution) into a form that is meaningful for a managerial decision -- the number of outlets that could be supported by a country's market demographics. In this instance, doing so can be accomplished effectively through modeling on a spreadsheet.<br><br>The purposes of the case are to show the relation between national statistics and company decisions and to give students training in conceptualizing a problem and modeling the analysis on a spreadsheet. The analyst is required to estimate the potential market demand for Kodak Express.
The case examines how Samsung has grown to become one of the world's leading global companies. It presents a detailed description of Samsung's "Top priority to the People' philosophy, and its strong cultural values; both of which have been instrumental in ensuring its continued success in the past few decades. Since 1982, Samsung Human Resource Development Center (SHRDC) has played a critical role in supporting Samsung's corporate strategy of achieving global competitiveness, through programs that focus upon maintaining Samsung values and developing a cadre of effective next generation leaders. New Employee Orientation (NEO), an intensive four-week in-house program for all Samsung employees, is one example of an SHRD program that helps provide a strong foundation of Samsung's unique culture among the new employees. Most importantly, NEO aligns employees across Samsung affiliates to its strategic direction, thereby fostering a stronger "Single Samsung" culture.<br><br>In recent years, however, NEO has been faced with new challenges. First, Samsung's pool of new employees has become more diverse, with the recruitment of more experienced and foreign (non-Korean) employees who are being targeted in addition to the fresh college graduates whom Samsung has always relied upon. Second, Samsung has become aware of stark value differences between the older employees, who are obedient and easily follow rules, and the younger 'digital native' employees, who are more individualistic and prefer egalitarian and open policies. Managers at SHRD are concerned that the "Single Samsung" spirit, which forms the core of Samsung culture, is being threatened from within.<br><br>Students must address issues related to the need for maintaining a unified organizational culture among diverse groups of employees whose values conflict with each others, and propose ways for Samsung to effectively employ and utilize all of its employees.
This role-play case involves a series of sessions in which the student (and each member of his or her team) will play the role of Benjamin Cheung, the vice president of HCM Asia Private Limited, a financial services firm based in Hong Kong. Cheung has an open-door policy where any manager can drop by to see him, on their own initiative, to ask for ideas, guidance, or a decision on an issue. He has only six minutes to see each manager in this informal coaching session since he has to leave for another important meeting at head office. Cheung knows the key details of each manager's background and development needs, but does not know in advance what the manager's specific concerns are. It will be necessary for Cheung to explore the manager's concerns through active listening, asking questions, and summarizing. Each of the manager roles is typical of those you might meet in an Asian organization, such as a highly skilled, technically focused leader who defaults to top-down management, an associate who lacks self-confidence and avoids confrontation at all cost, an ambitious associate who wants an international assignment but struggles with his current workload, and a detail-oriented leader who focuses on processes while losing sight of the big picture.
Margaret Linnane had just arrived home from a funders’ meeting where she had been asked questions that nearly challenged the very purpose of her nonprofit organization, Rollins College Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center (PNLC). She had been unprepared for the tough questions the funders had asked and she knew that she would need to be much better prepared for the next meeting in one month. She needed answers to the funders’ questions in four short weeks, so Linnane and the PNLC staff put other efforts on hold while they worked intensely to prepare. They gathered all the documents on the PNLC’s mission, vision, and strategic plan. They needed to determine what information to compile to convince the funders that the PNLC’s services (such as networking among established chief executive officers and foundation directors, and introducing newcomers to the nonprofit community) contributed to the professionalization of nonprofit leaders and organizations while addressing critical community issues — even if such services had not yet generated any revenue. What outcome measures were appropriate for assessing the success of non-income-generating activities such as networking? To start to search for answers to such questions, Linnane decided to review PNLC’s performance from the last two years and build a strategy for 2011-2012. Time was of the essence because without the support of funders, PNLC would be hard-pressed to continue offering its well-established networking activities.
Marco Polo Marine (MPM) Ltd was a medium-sized Singaporean shipping company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange that was involved in regional shipping and shipbuilding. The company was part of a larger Indonesian family business group, and had been built from scratch by the CEO. MPM had started off providing barges to transport sand and mining products, initially for the group’s mining operations, but increasingly for third parties. It subsequently entered the shipbuilding industry by establishing a shipyard in Batam, Indonesia, an island near Singapore. As a next step to grow the company, the CEO intended to become an international player in the much more sophisticated offshore marine services sector, but he had yet to decide what strategy to take to achieve it. The case allows students to analyze a global industry and present recommendations to the CEO for positioning the company within this industry. MPM is an example of an aspiring emerging market multinational, and the case discusses the challenges such companies face in catching up with more advanced incumbents in global industries. In order to penetrate the offshore marine services sector, decisions were required as to what types of vessels to build or buy, which countries to target, and how to enter this market given financial constraints and limited technical expertise.
El Mawardy Jewelry was an Egyptian jewelry company located in Cairo, Egypt. The company was able to attract many customers due to its variety of designs, high-quality products, and competitive prices. The friendly atmosphere and customized services provided by the salespeople helped the company gain a competitive advantage. The Mawardy family was able to build on its success and open different stores across Egypt. In 2009, the financial crisis hit Egypt and many businesses were negatively affected. Faced with this challenge and a goal to go international, the Mawardy family considered different possibilities. The company had many options, but decided to focus on Qatar and the United Kingdom. It needed to decide whether it was better to expand now or later. It also needed to consider where to expand first — Qatar or the United Kingdom.
This is a PELP case study. The case services as a follow-up to Meeting New Challenges at the Aldine Independent School District (A) case. Superintendent Nadine Kujawa retired in May 2007 and Wanda Bamberg, the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, was chosen by the school board to succeed Kujawa. In the midst of the economic crisis, Bamberg retained Aldine's vision and basic strategy. The system remained organized in five vertical feeder systems and continued to promote district veterans principal and area superintendent positions. Students performed well on the state assessment, but new challenges emerged. A more rigorous state test, the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR), was about to be implemented and the district grappled with flat-lining college readiness scores. Bamberg had a decision to make; she could keep the district doing what had worked so well in the past or strike out in an entirely new direction.
"This trial is going to take longer." Those were words that Michael Kaschke, CEO of Carl Zeiss AG, was not surprised to hear as he nurtured the intraoperative radiotherapy business inside his company's microsurgery unit. But he also didn't expect it to take 13 years to get to the end of an all-important clinical trial that was a critical enabler to the granting of reimbursement codes. The technology was clearly disruptive to him, but as the business confronted the challenges of improving the standard of care for women with breast cancer, he couldn't help but wonder if the greater opportunity was in vastly underserved emerging markets. But for 13 years he had been telling the team the importance of focus, and as the advanced markets of Germany, the UK, and the US started to hit high growth rates, was he now telling them something different? Was this a focus question or a strategic sequencing question?
Web analytic tools provide companies with a wealth of information about the behavior of visitors to their websites. Quality Alloys, a small business-to-business supplier, has hired an advisor to analyze the value of its website through traditional metrics, as well as the associated financial measures of sales, profits, and amount of merchandize sold. In this case, students recommend how Quality Alloys should market its business to improve sales and assess the value of the company's recent promotional efforts.
Web analytic tools provide companies with a wealth of information about the behavior of visitors to their websites. Quality Alloys, a small business-to-business supplier, has hired an advisor to analyze the value of its website through traditional metrics, as well as the associated financial measures of sales, profits, and amount of merchandize sold. In this case, students recommend how Quality Alloys should market its business to improve sales and assess the value of the company's recent promotional efforts.
In 2004, U.S.-based China Sourcing Group, which specialises in premium and gift products, established a sourcing office in Shanghai. The Shanghai office was responsible for sourcing vendors not only in China but also in southern Asia. It played a major role in quadrupling China Sourcing Group's revenues over the next four years. Despite its contribution to the group, the Shanghai office faced a major issue of frequent late deliveries, especially of new products that were developed from scratch. In 2009, as the Shanghai management team reviewed the performance of the sourcing office, it decided that something had to be done to improve the punctuality of that office's deliveries. What should the Shanghai office do to improve the situation?