This case examines the Fall 1998 decision of eBay management to proceed with the company's initial public offering during the quietest IPO market in twenty years. In Case A, eBay's Chief Financial Officer considers the financial and competitive implications of delaying the offering, as well as the challenge of fairly pricing the shares of an emerging unseasoned Internet stock. The case provides an excellent forum for students to discuss the costs and benefits of going public. Case B reviews the events of eBay's first trading day and the associated 160 percent return on the shares. With such a backdrop, students are exposed to one of the well-known finance anomalies--the IPO underpricing phenomenon--and are invited to critically discuss various proposed explanations.
In mid September 2001, Jennifer Campbell, the chief financial officer of this large CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and manufacturing) equipment manufacturer must decide whether to pay out dividends to the firm's shareholders or repurchase stock. If Campbell chooses to pay out dividends, she must also decide on the magnitude of the payout. A subsidiary question is whether the firm should embark on a campaign of corporate image advertising and change its corporate name to reflect its new outlook. Serves as an omnibus review of the many practical aspects of the dividend and share buyback decisions, including (1) signaling effects, (2) clientele effects, and (3) finance and investment implications of increasing dividend payout and share repurchase decisions. Can follow a treatment of the Miller Modigliani dividend irrelevance theorem and serve to highlight practical considerations in setting dividend policy.
Set in May 2000, these cases reflect the separate perspectives of the CEOs as they approach the negotiations of TSE International to acquire Yeats Valves. The task for the student is to complete a valuation analysis of the target and buyer, and to negotiate a price and exchange ratio with the counterparty. Each case contains a financial forecast only for that side; therefore, an important element in the negotiation is to obtain the private information of the other side, analyze it, and successfully negotiate terms of acquisition. The cases are relatively simple, and are offered as a first exercise in the valuation of the firm, and negotiation of an acquisition. They may be taught singly in usual case-discussion fashion, or combined into a joint-negotiation exercise where students are assigned parts to play. Used in a bilateral bargaining exercise, two teams of students are designated, each team representing one side of the negotiation and receiving a case designed for that team. The bargaining exercise provides a particular opportunity for joint teaching among instructors in finance, strategy, human behavior, and negotiation.
In July 2001, a new CEO joins this small manufacturer of CD-ROMs and DVDs to discover that the firm is in the midst of a financial crisis induced by rapid growth. The CEO asks an analyst for help with five tasks: (1) review historical performance of the firm; (2) forecast financing requirements for the next two years; (3) exercise the forecasting model to identify "key driver" assumptions; (4) estimate Star River's weighted average cost of capital; and (5) analyze a proposed investment in a packaging machine. The analyst must offer insights and recommendations based on the work.
This case examines the myriad of issues facing two entrepreneurs who use the search fund model to search for, purchase, and ultimately operate a home health care services company. The search fund is a proven investment vehicle through which a group of experienced investors support the efforts of aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to buy and run a small company, despite their lack of operating experience. After an arduous three-year search, Peter Landry, Paul Brooke, and a group of investors purchased SunWest Medical Services. However, shortly after the deal closed, Landry and Brooke realized that SunWest was a different company from the one they thought they had purchased. Among other things, the company was not as profitable and was shrinking rather than growing. Issues are tracked over an 11-year period. The case concludes with a review of ways an entrepreneur might best balance personal career interests with the financial interests of investors.
A brief introduction to the calculations inherent in pre-money and post-money valuations at multiple stages of financing. Relies on two different examples to illustrate that valuations can be calculated in a variety of ways, depending on the information provided. A rewritten version of an earlier note.
For many firms, government interaction is expansive, influencing the conduct of firms and industry structure. The visible hand of government, in the form of a regulatory scheme, plays a role in firm affairs along with the invisible hand of market forces. Deregulation and regulatory reform have changed but not eliminated government intervention. In such regulated environments, successful business strategy requires an understanding of the goals of regulatory involvement and the specifics of regulatory institutions. This note identifies some of the functions provided by regulatory institutions as well as the more important dimensions that differentiate specific institutional approaches to regulation. Understanding the common functions is important for managers interested in which approaches provide scope for long-term private sector involvement. Understanding the institutional differences is essential to devising specific strategies for business success. This note examines different regulatory decisions: the objectives behind regulatory intervention; the economic and legal basis of regulation; and various ways to implement a regulatory system, involving design choices in regulatory independence, the decision-making process, and industry scope.
In 1997, the American Heart Association (AHA) Western States Affiliate reorganized to increase fundraising revenues for the nonprofit. Rather than having a wide range of fundraising and programmatic duties, all staff now had key fundraising and programmatic activities. Some staff had been dissatisfied with the new scope and reporting structure of their positions. Roman Bowser, the executive vice president and CEO of the affiliate, made several adjustments to the organizational structure to deal with problems that arose with the organization and had other issues to consider in 2002 related to staff and local community volunteers--the lifeblood of the organization. Furthermore, a national AHS task force was recommending a reorganization of the AHA along the same lines that Bowser had used for his Western States Affiliate. Bowser was not certain that the national center and other affiliates could learn and benefit from his model, which he had tailored for a particular staff and geographical territory. He wondered how and if the AHA could leverage his organizational model across disparate communities nationally and what the impact might be on the long-term viability of the AHA.
The Royal Bank of Canada uses customer relationship management and customer profitability tools to gain a competitive advantage in Canada's increasingly crowded financial services market. The case presents two pricing and customer management issues: one from the point of view of the vice president of customer relationship marketing and the other from a line manager's perspective.
Examines the competitive challenges facing Robert Mondavi as the wine industry begins to consolidate globally. Mondavi faces challenges from foreign competitors entering the U.S. market as well as diversified global alcoholic beverage companies entering the wine business.
How can firms develop a competitive defense strategy that minimizes both the self-inflicted and competitor-inflicted damages of price competition? Before acting to defend market share or initiate price cuts, managers must anticipate the long-term strategic consequences and weigh them against the short-term benefits. A pricing decision should never be made simply to make the next sale or meet some short-term sales objective, but to enhance the firm's long-term ability to operate profitably. Pricing is like playing chess. Those who make moves one at a time--seeking to minimize immediate losses or exploit immediate opportunities--will invariably lose to those who envision the game a few moves ahead.
Given the growth in Asian markets, it is important for Western managers to understand what drives the success of Japanese and Korean business groups--keiretsus and chaebols. The purpose here is twofold: 1) to analyze, compare, and contrast the ownership, structure, government influence, financing, and culture of each of these two types of business groups; and 2) to analyze how each has dealt with the recent financial crisis in Asia. From this analysis emerge important lessons for strategic international management. The chaebols and keiretsus both emphasize the idea of harmony, but they have different interpretations of this concept and enact it differently. Both groups have altered their structures in response to the new global financial environment. The chaebols have taken the opportunity to solidify and expand their core business units and become more vertically integrated, whereas the keiretsus have succeeded only in the limited disposal of some nonperforming units.
Akamai's stock price declines dramatically with the NASDAQ in 2000, causing virtually all employee options to go underwater. Ownership and retention incentives are largely destroyed, and employee morale falls sharply. Management weighs the pros and cons of various alternative "solutions" to this problem (including repricing, issuing a new supplemental grant, canceling the underwater options and issuing a delayed regrant, and making a tender offer to exchange underwater options for fewer shares of restricted stock).
The (A) and (B) cases describe the evolution of HP supply chain for its PC business in Europe between years 1992 and 1999 and the different initiatives: build-to-order, vendor-managed inventory, supply hubs, top value, channel assembly program, etc. What should be the next step in this highly competitive environment?. Case (C) deals with HP strategy of outsourcing production to SCI, a contract manufacturer.