A real estate appraiser has been hired to provide an alternate assessment on a set of office buildings in London, Ontario. Real estate assessments are often based on comparisons versus similar properties. However, because the set of comparison properties is small he cannot rely on standard quantitative techniques like linear regression. Instead he uses a technique called quality point in which the property valuation problem can be formulated as a quadratic program.
The Canadian firearms program initially was established to set up a shared database. However, increasing costs of the firearms program is a concern for a number of Canadians. Should the federal government continue with the program, de-escalate or cancel the program. The case requires students to simultaneously evaluate the issues of the database design, software outsourcing, IS project management and change management. It can also be used to cover cost analysis, and political influences in decision-making.
Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is beginning to disrupt plain old telephone service (POTS). Ron Close has been offered the job of heading Bell Canada's nascent VoIP business. Bell is Canada's largest telco and supplier of POTS. The case provides a platform for discussing a disruptive innovation (VoIP) and its implications for an incumbent player. Ron Close explains how Bell addressed the technology challenge, and its managerial and organizational consequences in an available video, product 7B06M009.
The Rayovac case discusses the company's bold and risky acquisitions strategy as it diversifies into personal care and grooming, lawn and garden care, insecticides and pet foods. The company assumes it can successfully manage diverse product categories across diverse geographic markets in which it has limited experience. Success will depend on how well the acquired companies are integrated and managed under Rayovac's supervision. Increasingly, it will also depend on external conditions beyond Rayovac's control, such as macroeconomic conditions and foreign exchange fluctuations. Students should be able to analyze the case from the point of view of international business and strategy and perform a financial analysis of potential future returns using different assumptions for sales growth and margins of the various businesses acquired.
The senior vice-president for corporate development for Charles River Laboratories must prepare a presentation to the company's board of directors requesting up to a $2 million investment in a Mexican joint venture with a family-owned animal health company. However, the chief executive officer views the proposed joint venture as a potential distraction while his company continues to expand rapidly in the United States. He is also worried about the risks of investing in a country like Mexico and the plan to partner with a small, family-owned company. Moreover, the Mexican partner is unable to invest any cash in the joint venture, which would need to be fully funded by Charles River Laboratories. The supplement Alpes S.A.: A Joint Venture Proposal (B) looks at what happened.
The senior vice-president for corporate development for Charles River Laboratories must prepare a presentation to the company's board of directors requesting up to a $2 million investment in a Mexican joint venture with a family-owned animal health company. This is a supplement to Alpes S.A.: A Joint Venture Proposal (A).
An investment advisor at a major brokerage is considering whether she should recommend Wal-Mart stock to her clients who do not currently have this stock in their portfolios. Students will be presented with basic valuation concepts including the dividend discount model, price-earnings model and applications of the capital asset pricing model.
A small proprietary trader of securities considers setting up a full service investment bank in the life sciences sector in the United States. This business opportunity has arisen because the Canadian government has been gradually lifting foreign ownership limits, US small cap companies are not as well-represented in stock portfolios of Canadians, and the US market is not as over-serviced by analysts as the Canadian market in life sciences and healthcare in particular. Several decisions need to be made including what types of services to offer, how many analysts to hire, where to set up the main office, and how to obtain the capital investment that is required.
Every Tuesday evening, after a hectic day at the NBC Universal offices in Universal City, Neal Baer kicked up his feet to watch the latest episode of the award-winning police television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU). SVU was part of the triumvirate Law & Order franchise created by Hollywood legend Dick Wolf. The suite of shows included the original Law & Order, SVU, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Baer, an Emmy-nominated writer, was a "showrunner" for SVU--industry slang for the person in charge of every aspect of a television series, from story creation to script writing to direction and post-production--essentially the person who "ran the show." The term, showrunner, arose from the need to distinguish the executive producer from the writers, cast members, and post-production people who were often called "co-executive producers." Being a showrunner was analogous to being a baseball manager: "While the baseball manager reports to a general manager as well as a team owner(s), he is still perceived by the players, the public, and the journalists as the driving force behind the team. He is lauded if the team is successful, and fired if the team is losing. The same is true for the showrunner. Also, like a baseball manager, the showrunner works with other producers, who like the manager's coaching staff--the pitching coach, and the first- and third-base coaches--are professionals and expert at what they do." As a showrunner, Baer was a lot like senior managers at traditional corporations--he and SVU had earned enough respect within the industry to lead to a significant amount of autonomy but not absolute freedom. He needed to keep people below and above him happy. And he needed to be strategic at a high level to make a successful series while juggling tight deadlines and budgetary constraints, among other day-to-day details, on multiple episodes.
Michelle Levene discovers that she is pregnant a few days before receiving an offer for her dream job. The new position would require Levene to travel extensively, something she would not be able to do towards the end of the pregnancy and while caring for a newborn. Levene has been with biotech leader Genzyme Corp. for two years and cannot imagine a better professional opportunity than the new position at this stage in her career. Should she accept the job, telling her new manager that she is pregnant? Should she accept the job but wait a few months to discuss the pregnancy--after all, this is her first baby and who knows what might happen? Or should she meet with the new manager and tell him that under the circumstances, she would expect him to rescind the verbal offer?
Describes China's phenomenal development from a poor, communist country to a global powerhouse. Provides background on China's history and culture, details the reforms launched in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, and describes the situation as of 2006, focusing on the government's attempts to equalize China's financial markets without giving up the reins of central control.
On September 15, 2004, the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) expired. Because the two sides had failed to negotiate a new CBA by that date, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman locked out the players--no hockey would be played, no revenues would be collected, and no salaries would be paid. The key issues in the negotiation were the league's demand for a salary cap and for the linking of salaries to league revenues. The players opposed both of these demands. After months of near-fruitless negotiation, Bettman threatened to cancel the entire season, a move that would destroy billions in revenue. Provides a rich history of the two sides' relationship and an account of the negotiations that led up to the season cancellation threat. Asks students to analyze the power tactics that each side has used to its advantage in prior negotiations and to propose strategies that might help either side pull off a successful negotiation in the current context, which involves entrenched positions, complex issues, and severe distrust.
Jewellworld.com was established in April 2000 to take advantage of the business opportunity presented by the Internet. Participating in Jewellworld.com's B2B platform was like participating in a virtual Jewelry trade fair, through which sellers could showcase their products to buyers online and buyers could contact sellers and even place orders online. However, Jewellworld.com quickly realized that Hong Kong's jewelry industry was by no means at the forefront of information technology. Facilitates discussion around a strategic/marketing planning process, which involves: sizing up the business environment, sizing up the company, identifying and generating strategic options, and assessing the options.
This case details the in-house discovery of WorldCom's fraudulent accounting practices and the ethical considerations employees faced during the investigation. In May 2002, Cynthia Cooper, vice president of internal audit for WorldCom, the second-largest telecommunications company in the United States, faced an extremely difficult decision. After months of sleuthing, initially not sure what they were seeking, she and two of her employees at the Clinton, Mississippi, WorldCom headquarters had discovered almost $4 billion in questionable accounting entries. The specter of the Enron collapse in the fall of 2001 still loomed large, and Cooper realized that the situation at WorldCom might even be a far greater financial debacle. If this fraud were revealed, much would be at stake: the company's credibility, the fate of thousands of employees, and pension funds loaded with WorldCom stock.
In late October 2003, Randy Scott and the Genomic Health team had just received the results of Genomic Health's first pivotal trial. The company's product, Oncotype DX, a first-of-its-kind genomic assay that quantified the likelihood of breast cancer recurrence, had exceeded the standard measures of patient age, tumor size, and tumor grade in predicting recurrence outcomes. The study results would be presented at the 2003 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2004. Scott and his team now faced the challenge of determining how and when to launch this groundbreaking product. The team was eager to get the product to market as quickly as possible. However, extensive market research performed earlier in the year reveals that it had less than 10% awareness in the physician community and even less among consumers. When asked about what factors would influence their adoption, physicians overwhelmingly cited clinical validation studies--and lots of them. Many skeptics within the oncology field felt that the legitimate use of genomics in making treatment decisions was still 10 to 20 years in the future.
By the mid-2000s, no segment of the $180 billion global medical device industry was as dynamic as the market for drug eluting stents (DESs). In the United States, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total DES market, only two companies had regulatory approval to sell the small devices: Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. In combination, these two organizations expected 2005 DES sales of approximately $5.5 billion--an increase of 36% from 2004. Forecasts called for the segment to exceed $7 billion by 2008. Driven in part by its size, the DES market was among the most competitive and challenging sectors in the medical device industry. The competitive landscape was marked by intense rivalries and plagued by fierce litigation over intellectual property. Yet, it was also characterized by complex intercompany partnerships, collaboration, and licensing deals. Although DESs had been shown to significantly reduce restenosis rates, new safety concerns were emerging related to the development of life threatening blood clots linked to DESs.