In 2022, Mazatlán was enjoying a reputation as a popular seaside town on the Mexican Pacific Coast, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Protected by a bay and three islands, it offered sandy beaches and favourable weather year-round, making it an attractive destination for Mexican, American, and Canadian vacationers. It was a popular stop for Pacific Ocean cruises, where tourists could enjoy beaches, sunshine, Mexican cuisine and culture, and various sporting activities including baseball, marathons, triathlons, sport fishing, and soccer. However, Mazatlán's image was being tainted by unfavourable events, which presented unique challenges for the city's marketers and threatened to endanger the city's highly successful tourism industry. Mazatlán's tourism authorities were wondering how to keep the city's tourism brand and image strong, despite these new and significant challenges.
In July 2012, the French multinational company Michelin Group, one of the largest tire manufacturers in the world, was facing accusations of failing to respect human rights and environmental rights in its operations in Tamil Nadu, India. This complaint came at the surprise of managers at the company who had made efforts to create relationships with local communities. At Michelin Group's headquarters in France, the senior member of the sustainability team had to decide how to respond to the complaint in a way that would satisfy both external stakeholders (e.g., local communities and civil society organizations) and internal stakeholders (e.g., employees and managers from other departments).
Leslie Castle, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and accounting firm partner, finds herself in a reflective mode, recollecting several previous conversations with several nonaccountants that had questioned some core contemporary financial reporting practices pertaining to balance sheets. In particular, she had been challenged to consider that balance sheets and their related disclosures should: •move from acquired-only to acquired and internally created intangible assets; •move from financial-only to financial and nonfinancial measures; •move from many acceptable accounting method choices to fewer acceptable accounting method choices; •move from single-measure numbers to ranges, probabilities, and sensitivity analyses; and •move from articulated to nonarticulated balance sheets and income statements. The case provides an opportunity for reimagining some of accounting's traditional balance sheet conventions and related disclosures. The two questions posed in the case title undergird the case tasks for student pursuit and are in part the foundational questions posed in the general process of design thinking, an appropriate mindset for discussing this case.
Shopee has become the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia as of early 2022. Led by CEO Chris Feng, Shopee began its expansion beyond the region to the Americas, Europe and India. India is expected to surpass the U.S. to become the second largest e-commerce market in the world by the 2030s. Shopee entered the Indian market in mid-2021 to harness the opportunities stemming from favourable technological, socio-cultural, political and economic environments. Shopee consistently deployed its resources and capabilities from its playbook of strengths to catch up with incumbents such as Amazon India, Walmart-owned Flipkart, Tata Group and Reliance Industries. However, Shopee faced severe challenges - logistical issues, consumer distrust arising from rampant e-commerce fraud, difficult transition to digital payments, cut-throat competition, suspicions over its indirect ownership structure for market entry, resistance from local retailers and a tough legal and geopolitical landscape. CEO Chris Feng had had a tough choice to make - whether to stay or to go. Just months after entering India, Shopee announced in March 2022 that it would be closing its Indian operations. This case shed light on the trade-offs of this market exit and offers insights into international expansion to emerging markets amid environmental uncertainty.
In fall 2021, Aliana Piñeiro, impact director at Boston Impact Initiative (BII) discovered that an entrepreneur the organization was considering for an investment had failed to disclose pre-existing debt with another lender. Although the business scored highly on BII's criteria for investment, Piñeiro and her colleagues had to reevaluate its risk profile in light of the additional debt. They also had to decide how to manage their relationship with the entrepreneur. The BII team determined an entrepreneur's creditworthiness through a series of in-depth conversations rather than using a one-size-fits-all application form. They also did not perform criminal background checks or credit checks. Nevertheless, they were disappointed that the entrepreneur had not disclosed his previous debt, and wondered why he had failed to bring it up in their previous conversations. At the conclusion of the case, Piñeiro and her team must decide whether to move forward with the investment and if so, how to address the issue with the entrepreneur.
Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020, Betsy Harbison formed the search fund Forest Park Capital with the intention of purchasing a small business. The case conveys the details of Betsy's final decision at the terminus of her search, between a software company specializing in vacation-trip planning, and a landscaping business. Betsy must weigh the pros and cons of each company in order to determine which is the best acquisition.
Bajaj Finance, India's largest consumer finance firm with $20.9 billion of assets across 50.5 million customers, is on a journey to transform itself from a traditional firm that sells loans and other financial products through brick-and-mortar outlets to an omnipresent firm that offers customers a seamless experience across the physical and online world. Can a traditional offline firm with limited experience in the digital arena embrace a new customer-focused way of working? Can it win against a consumer tech giant like Amazon, which aspires to be the "earth's most customer-centric company"?
In 2020, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the cornerstone of the multilateral rules-based global trading system, faced the biggest crisis of its existence. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, two of the organization's main functions - providing a negotiation forum to establish new trade rules and resolving disputes between its 164 members - had faced challenges. The crisis facing the WTO had been largely created by the growing geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was convinced that the WTO could not handle the problems created by China's economic ascent. It believed, first of all, that China's status as a developing country at the WTO gave it an unfair advantage in the international trade arena. Second, it believed the WTO's rules could not address the challenges presented by China with regard to state-owned enterprises and industrial subsidies. Third, it claimed that the Appellate Body had consistently committed judicial overreach in a way that hurt U.S. interests. Based entirely on public information, this case gives students an opportunity to reflect on the WTO's role in today's global economy and how the strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China were challenging the multilateral trading system.
Latam Airlines (henceforth, Latam) was born from the merger of the Chilean airline LAN, owned by the Cueto family, and the Brazilian airline TAM, owned by the Amaro group, in 2012, which consolidated it as the most important airline group in South America. The present case relates the financial problems that motivated Latam to sign a strategic agreement with Delta, which if materialized, would cause the Cueto family (Latam's controlling group) to relinquish its ownership interest in the company.The agreement between Latam and Delta was announced on September 26, 2019 and established that Delta would acquire a 20% stake in the South American airline. A day later, Ignacio Cueto, the decision maker in the case, member of the controlling family and Chairman of Latam's Board of Directors, reflected on the benefits and disadvantages of the strategic agreement with Delta in an interview with a Chilean media outlet. Cueto predicted that the agreement would offer solutions both to the expansion problem the company was facing and to the consequences that this problem had generated in the company's financial position and performance. However, Ignacio was concerned about the changes that this alliance would cause in Latam's management and ownership. He could not stop thinking about other alternatives for creating corporate value in the long term without giving up ownership interest in the company.
This case is a roleplay simulation of the negotiations between the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC-EP, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (henceforth FARC), leading up to and after the peace agreement of 2016. The peace agreement put an end to an armed conflict that lasted for more than 50 years and cost more than 200,000 lives. The negotiations cover six Negotiation Topics: i. laying down arms & safety guarantees; ii. social integration of FARC; iii. justice & trial of war crimes; iv. political participation of FARC; v. rural reform; and vi. drug production. Students assume the roles of six participants in the negotiation, forming two delegations. One represents the Colombian Government and the other represents FARC.
Although Tuplastibog is a fictitious name, it is based on a real company that was created in 2014 by Juan Carlos Ordoñez, using financing from his family's business Agropecuaria de Occidente. Tuplastibog is losing money and faces going into liquidation unless urgent corrective measures are taken. Juan Carlos needs to convince his father (Agropecuaria de Occidente's controlling shareholder) to support his business, but first he needs to ensure that his projections are correct and that the accounting measures he plans to implement make sense and will help his company stay afloat in coming years. To help students develop the case, an Excel spreadsheet is attached (Student_Excel.xlsx) A teacher version is also attached (Teacher_Excel.xlsx) to help understand the impact of the adjustments and financial statement projections.
Founded in 2017, the canned-water company Liquid Death had raised about US$125 million in venture capital funding and created a strong following within the punk and heavy metal communities. However, the brand was seeking to expand and needed to choose the best growth strategy, which involved deciding which customers to target, whether to develop new products or line extensions, how to continue to use promotions and communications to defend the brand’s “cool” and eco-friendly image while appealing to a broader range of consumers, and how to stave off competitive threats.
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) was facing a proxy attack from Trian Fund Management, L.P. (Trian) after Trian declared a US$3.5 billion position in P&G, equivalent to a 1.5 per cent shareholding, in February 2017. The fund manager called for a reorganization of the company to improve its performance and for a seat on P&G’s board of directors for Trian’s co-founder Nelson Peltz. Over the next few months, both parties discussed Trian’s proposals, but the negotiations broke down in July 2017, and the conflict became public. Trian announced it would put its demands to a vote during the annual shareholder meeting in October. A month before the meeting, P&G CEO David Taylor had to make a recommendation to the board: should the company accept or rebuff Trian’s attempt at gaining influence?
Nord Stream 2 was an offshore pipeline project of the Russian energy company Gazprom to transport natural gas to Europe. The US government was skeptical about this project as it believed that Russia would use the pipeline to increase its influence in Europe. The Russian annexation of Crimea and reported Russian support to the secessionist groups in Eastern Ukraine further complicated the situation. The events in Ukraine resulted in the United States and European Union imposing economic sanctions on the Russian government, institutions, and specific individuals. The pipeline construction was completed amid continued hostilities, repeatedly imposed sanctions, and political transitions in the US and Germany.<br><br>Nord Stream 2 AG, the Swiss-based subsidiary of Gazprom which was created to operate the pipeline, applied to the German national energy regulator for pipeline certification but was refused until Gazprom created a German subsidiary to operate the pipeline. Such a condition would require Gazprom to dilute its stake and control over its critical asset; however, not meeting the regulator’s conditions would ensure that the pipeline remained inoperative and that the company’s US$11 billion investment to complete the project would be held up until Gazprom could mount a legal, diplomatic, and geopolitical campaign to overturn the regulator’s decision.