The president of a small mining company is faced with an opportunity to purchase a mining refinery to complement its existing mining operations. It has the potential to bring the company into a situation of positive cashflow, but the small size of the company and high risk of the mining industry has left the president with few alternatives to raise the capital. The case focuses on the issuing of a Euro-denominated bond to finance this purchase and provide funds for future acquisitions. The case discusses the alternatives available in such a situation as well as the risks associated with changes in the price of metals and the value of the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar and the Euro on the ability to make regular payments on the Euro-denominated bond and other financing alternatives.
In July, 1991, Irfan Mustafa, West Asia Area Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Pepsi Cola Pakistan Incorporated (PCI), faced several dilemmas. First, as part of the 7-Up acquisition, Mustafa had to convince the remaining Pakistani 7-Up bottlers to sell their plants to PCI bottlers and oversee the resulting integration. Second, Pepsi Cola International had shifted focus to its global brands, and since acquiring 7-Up International in 1986, had withdrawn all marketing and technical support for Pepsi's local yet successful Pakistani brand, Teem. In light of the focus on global brands, Mustafa needed to determine the role of each brand in his portfolio (Pepsi, 7-Up, Teem, and Mirinda), with particular focus on 7-Up and Teem. Lastly, in an effort to distinguish 7-Up from Teem, formerly competitors, PCI had developed Cloudy Teem-a milky colored lemon-lime soft drink. Mustafa had to assess whether Cloudy Teem had major growth potential and if so, figure out how to role it out across Pakistan despite resistance from his bottlers. This case explores Mustafa's dilemmas, also touching on urban versus rural marketing and distribution challenges.
With prices of oil, coal and gas at historically high levels, the wind industry had installed more than 20,000 MW of wind energy, representing a $37 billion investment in 2007. Besides high prices, wind energy represented a solution for consumers seeking an energy source that would not add to the problems associated with global climate change. Suzlon Energy Limited (Suzlon), India's largest manufacturer of wind turbines had evolved from a small family-run business into a global enterprise spanning across four continents in just over a decade. But would the costs associated with the aggressive growth policy be too much for a young company to handle?
Many of us will at some point in our professional lives encounter situations involving what we believe to be wrongful or injurious activities that may cause harm to innocent parties, our company, or the public. It may be necessary to bring the matter to the attention of someone who can do something about it--to engage in what is sometimes called "whistleblowing." This note outlines some factors that should be considered when that happens.
This case focuses on Kit Hinrichs, a 65 year-old partner at Pentagram, a privately-owned multidisciplinary design firm. One of the world's most prestigious design firms, Pentagram was founded by five designers from different disciplines in London in the 1970s. By 2008, Pentagram remained small, with less than 30 partners, each a veritable star in his or her own right. Pentagram had two founding principles, the first of which was equality. The equality principle meant that leadership was evenly distributed; partners with seniority had no greater formal authority than newer partners, and the only formal leadership role was a chairman position, which, after being held with a founder for 30 years, was rotated every two years. Further, Pentagram had no corporate office; each partner was expected to manage their own financial, marketing, and human resource functions. Pentagram's second principle was generosity. All partners were equal shareholders in the firm. Pentagram branched out to New York in the early 1980s, and in the late 1980s, Hinrichs established a San Francisco location. This case traces Hinrichs as he builds Pentagram's San Francisco office, and it also details the evolution of Pentagram itself. In addition, this case offers a thick description of Hinrichs and his team working with a client. This case can be used in business and executive education courses on professional service firms, leading a creative organization, and the role of design in business. It should also be used by schools of design.
On 6 November 2007, Alibaba.com debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising US$1.5 billion to become the world's biggest internet offering since Google's initial public offering in 2004. A frenzied purchase of the stock pushed prices up by 193% on the first trading day, making it the fourth-largest first-day gain in Hong Kong's stock exchange in three years. The closing price of US$5.09 per share valued Alibaba.com at about US$25.6 billion and made it the fifth-largest among global internet companies and the largest in Asia outside Japan. It also made the company one of the most expensive stocks in Hong Kong, trading at 306 times the company's projected 2007 earnings. In contrast, globally recognized brand names such as Yahoo and Japan's Softbank, both major stockholders of Alibaba.com, were trading at only 60 times their projected earnings. Shareholders were therefore displaying extreme optimism towards Alibaba.com's earning prospect by paying a significant premium to own the company's shares. As observers and venture capitalists have remarked, China is becoming a center of technology and a major pole for innovation. Many successful dot com strategies in the West have been copied and refined by Chinese technological gurus who have honed their technical and entrepreneurial skills in the West. These "sea turtles" are beating international giants likes Google and eBay in the burgeoning Chinese market and have their sights set on global domination. Armed with proceeds from a record-breaking IPO, Alibaba.com is poised to stay ahead in the increasingly-competitive online B2B market in China. What strategies can the company pursue and what pitfalls must it avoid?
The director and chair of the governance committee at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (MDA) considered how to advise the company's chief executive officer (CEO). As a company in the space industry, MDA relied on its exports to the United States. Joint ventures were helpful in securing contracts from the U.S. government but they were not always advantageous in other ways because these ventures required partnerships with competitors. At this time, MDA had no long term strategy to address this issue. The supplements MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (B) and (C) look at subsequent events that were unforeseen at this particular time.
Considers the creation of one of the world's largest beauty and fragrance companies by Bernd Beetz, appointed chief executive of Coty Inc. in 2001. The case opens with the creation of a new Russian subsidiary in the wake of the global financial crisis, and examines how a virtually new company was created over the previous years. In 1990 the German consumer goods company Benkiser began acquiring fragrance and cosmetics brands with the intent of developing a beauty business. These included the long-established, but relatively small US fragrance company Coty. In 1996 the beauty business was spun off under the name Coty. When Beetz was hired as chief executive, it was still a fragmented collection of recently acquired brands. The case describes how Beetz re-ignited the dormant celebrity fragrance business with the successful launch of a new Jennifer Lopez fragrance line. Fashioning a new entrepreneurial culture based on the principles of "faster, further, freer," Coty hired longstanding executives from other firms and liberated their entrepreneurial capabilities, refreshing brands which had been tarnished into a global mass color cosmetics brand. In 2005 the acquisition of Calvin Klein from Unilever, and its renewal, catapulted Coty into the position of the world's largest fragrance company. The case provides an opportunity to examine the entrepreneurial, cultural, and organizational factors which enable acquired brands and employees to be re-invigorated and molded into a dynamic new global business. It asks if the cultural and other factors behind its rapid growth can sustain the company as it seeks growth much further as a top five beauty company.     
In a series of vignettes, Nigella Hardy-Smyth of an international development agency that invests partners in emerging markets private equity firms must decide how to handle various situations that arise. As a member of the Limited Partner Advisory Board of each of the five firms, she must contend with a fund manager with an indistinct mandate, a manager who wants to exceed the concentration limit in an investment, tension between a star investor and her other partners, a founding partner who wants to fire the rest of his senior team, and a limited partner seeking preferential treatment that might benefit his fund to the detriment of the other limited partners. The process of discussing these helps the class explore the nuanced role of a limited partner in a private equity firm.
This note explores the limited partner advisory boards. Based on interviews with seven experienced limited partners who serve on a number of different advisory boards, it presents the roles of the advisory board, the ways it can influence the general partner, and the reasons for limited partners to serve on them. It also contrasts the findings of this survey with a paper on the performance differential between university endowments and other institutional investors and hypothesizes the reasons behind it.
Barry Nalls describes lessons learned during his 25-year career--his rise at GTE and shorter-lived ventures--and how these prepared him to found MASERGY, a telecommunications start-up. Even as a young boy in a family of entrepreneurs, Nalls had a reputation as a hard worker, but instead of becoming an entrepreneur himself, he built a long career at "the biggest company around," GTE. After years of working there in sales and marketing, he decided to venture out on his own. His GTE experiences armed him for some entrepreneurial challenges, but also caused additional problems as he tried to start, build, and grow MASERGY. Four years after founding the venture, he now feels that he should have "taken the entrepreneurial plunge" much earlier in life.
The story of Daksh, one of India's leading BPO companies that was bought out by IBM in April 2004 at an estimated amount of US$170 million, had all the elements of the great Indian IT dream: entrepreneurship, innovation, venture capital, wealth creation and a quick exit. Elaborating the post buy-out scenario the case highlights various issues arising from mergers and acquisitions and throws throws open for discussion different aspects of the dynamics of acquisition integration. The case also addresses the question as to why the soon-to-go-public Daksh had agreed to a sell-out and, more importantly, what had prompted IBM to acquire Daksh. Students are challenged to evaluate whether or not the takeover was the right decision, and how it fit into IBM's overall strategy. The case can either be used independently or in conjunction with Daksh and IBM: Business Process Outsourcing in India - Part 1. The Formative Years, which looks at Daksh as a fast growth entrepreneurial venture.
Considers the entrepreneurial career of the founder of Mitsubishi, Yataro Iwasaki, who built a large shipping company against the opposition of powerful Western incumbents. Although sometimes supported by the Japanese government, and often times opposed, the case identifies Iwasaki's entrepreneurial talent and organization-building skills as key drivers of success. This case provides a vehicle for examining the entrepreneurial factors behind Japan's remarkable transition from a feudal to a modern society in the second half of the nineteenth century.
World Wildlife Fund US is a leading international conservation nonprofit that operates within a global network of WWF organizations. This case examines WWF US's strategy to achieve its mission of protecting natural wildlife and resources. In contrast to traditional approaches in which WWF country programs operated relatively independently, the new strategy involves integrating WWF US more fully within the global WWF network, and fostering longer term, trust-based relationships among all partner organizations toward their shared conservation goals. The case highlights the Tesso Nilo conservation project, which brought together various WWF partners to stop illegal logging in Sumatra, and revive its wildlife environment to illustrate a network approach within a global multisite nonprofit.
In the summer of 2007, Mattel performed three major recalls of toys, mostly due to lead paint and other manufacturing issues in China. This case examines specifically how those recalls were perceived by consumers, and responded to by Mattel, as well as what effect they had on the toy industry, consumer safety, and manufacturing in China in general.
This case describes the work of the Innovation Program Office (IPO) within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP). It shows how this group solicits, qualifies and develops ideas for new products and services.
The case explores the rapid and highly effective turnaround at AREVA's transmission and distribution (T&D) business by focusing on the division's operations. The division was struggling in 2004 when newly-appointed CEO Philippe Guillemot and his team improved performance substantially by focusing on four levers - industrial footprint realignment, competitive sourcing, process efficiency, and a competitive product offering. In 2008, the case challenges students to identify the best path forward. How can the progress achieved from 2004-2007 be sustained? AREVA T&D hopes to surpass ABB and Siemens in sales and profitability by focusing on superior product offerings, through "customer intimacy" (e.g., involving customers in new product development), and developing a reputation for environmentally-friendly behavior. What is the role of operations management in this context?