This case follows the 2017 acquisition valuation of Mary Washington Pediatrics in Northern Virginia by two pediatricians, Natalia Juarez and Kirsten Atwood. The case provides a simple context for discussing approaches for enterprise valuation, including discounted cash flow (DCF) and transaction multiples methods. Students are encouraged to critique a financial forecast for the practice using the current performance of the target company and other comparables. The case has been used in a course specific to medical professionals but could be used by any group seeking an introduction to valuation mechanics.
As the Chief Administrative Officer of UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) and president of UMass Memorial (UMM) Community Hospitals, Douglas Brown had just received unanimous and enthusiastic approval to pursue his "Anchor Mission" project at UMMHC in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was extremely excited by the board's support, but also quite apprehensive about how to make the Anchor Mission a reality. Doug had spearheaded the Anchor Mission from its earliest exploratory efforts. The goal of the health system's Anchor Mission-an idea developed by the Democracy Collaborative, an economic think tank-was to address the social determinants of health in its community beyond the traditional approach of providing excellent clinical care. He had argued that UMMHC had an obligation as the largest employer and economic force in Central Massachusetts to consider the broader development of the community and to address non-clinical factors, like homelessness and social inequality that made people unhealthy. To achieve this goal, UMMHC's Anchor Mission would undertake three types of interventions: local hiring, local sourcing/purchasing, and place-based community investment projects. While the board's enthusiasm was palpable and inspiring, Doug knew that sustaining it would require concrete accomplishments and a positive return on any investments the health system made in the project. The approval was just the first step. Innovation and new ways of thinking would be necessary. The bureaucracy behind a multi-billion-dollar healthcare organization would need to change. Even the doctors and nurses would need to change! He knew that the project had enormous potential but would become even more daunting from here.
Seng Hua Hng (SHH) Foodstuffs Pte Ltd, the largest nuts manufacturer in Singapore, was the company behind Camel Nuts, a trusted household brand name in nut snacks in the country. Camel had a prominent brand presence both domestically and internationally in 29 countries. Aspiring to continued growth, in 2016, the company set a strategic target of 100-100-10, which stands for S$100 million (US$72 million) revenue, geographic presence in 100 countries and a profit of S$10 million (US$7 million) by the year 2020. In late 2017, a year into his new role as Head of Group Finance at SHH, Colin Chin commissioned a team of SMU accounting students to build data analytics capability in-house to help the company achieve its strategic goals. In the past, SHH as a traditional family business would rely on ballpark estimates to make key strategic decisions, for example, to determine annual production capacity. The practice of using past years' demand in current year's production planning had continued throughout the decades. Some of the key challenges SHH faced was the lack of accurate demand forecasting on a periodic basis and the absence of important financial information that would support the risk assessment of expansion to new foreign markets. By leveraging the power of predictive analytics, Colin wanted to find answers from the data insights to help him overcome some of the challenges the organisation was facing. How could SHH grow its existing markets, both domestically and overseas, and by how much? What are some of the new markets SHH can enter? Will there be any potential cannibalisation of existing products if SHH were to introduce a new product line? Could data analytics help decision-making at SHH to become data-driven, hence enabling the company to better assess if the goals of 100-100-10 were within or out of reach?
The founding principle of contracts is the freedom of the parties. The parties are free to choose their terms and follow any modality of communication, oral or written. As they can freely make a contract, they can freely modify or unmake it. Written contracts have a clause, No Oral Modification Clause (NOM Clause), precluding oral modifications of the contract. Irrespective of it, business persons make oral agreements modifying the contract, and later, dispute its validity. If the parties are free to contract, why should the oral agreement not be binding? In a NOM Clause then, ineffective? The United Kingdom Supreme Court, in MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd v Rock Advertising Ltd, explores this fundamental question on contract law.
This case is intended to take students through the cycle of a direct investment, during which a number of decisions has to be made by the financial investor as the shareholder of the investee company. In a situation where the financial investor is a minority shareholder, it is of the investor's best interest to be sensitive to the alignment of shareholders, especially with the controlling/strategic shareholder. When faced with a decision as to whether to maximize value for itself, or share value with the controlling/strategic shareholder, the financial investor should look harder to find creative solutions which can add value to both the minority and the controlling shareholder. Often times, additional investment means additional risk, and the then-current reward/risk balance should be carefully considered, including the then-current fundamentals of the investee company, and the competitive environment of the industry.
Air Liquide, a leader in centric industrial and healthcare gases, seeks to develop 'customer intimacy' through digital technologies following its acquisition of US company Airgas. VP Olivier Blachier is tasked to articulate for the board a vision of customer centricity and a digital strategy. First he must unpack the type of relationships that they each have with their core customer segments, and then select approporate digital technology - from AI to big data, social media or robotics - for small, mid-size and large customers respectively. New organizational structure are needed to support the group's digital transformation, foster agility in a fast-paced environment and and turn Air Liquide into a learning agent. A teaching note supplement with short recommendations for remote teaching of the case is available.
Five high school students are lured into working at a logistics warehouse for what they consider a high salary for their first job. After they start, their dreams are shattered. Over the next four months the workplace reality transforms into a nightmare.
In the aftermath of the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami in 2018, lives are at stake, infrastructure is damaged, coordination is limited and information is scarce. It is in this environment that humanitarian organizations have to operate in order to assist affected people in disaster-struck areas. The case follows the complex challenges confronting an international non-governmental organization (INGO) organizing a disaster response from HQ to provide aid to the victims in Indonesia.
Ontario's basic income pilot was a social policy experiment designed to redistribute income with the aim of reducing poverty and adapting the social safety net in the face of a changing and increasingly precarious labour market. The three-year project, launched in 2017, was described as the largest government-run basic income project to date. It was designed to provide basic income in the form of negative income tax to 4,000 eligible individuals who were assured a minimum level of income regardless of their employment status. The debate about universal basic income (UBI) continues as governments and private entities around the world pilot different projects. How should UBI funded and who should receive the money? How would it change people's behavior and labor market participation? Could UBI help society address surging levels of inequality?
In 2014, as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has just brought former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on as chairman of the board, Jean Rogers, founder and CEO, struggles with how best to ensure the nonprofit's financial sustainability while pushing for broad acceptance of its nonfinancial accounting metrics.
How to run a platform to match 4 million writers of stories to 75 million readers? Use data science. Make money by doing deals with television and film makers and book publishers. The case describes the challenges of matching readers to stories, and of helping writers to produce better stories by supplying feedback on their chapters as they write, all by processing a billion data points daily. But it's hard to acquire new customer groups when algorithms have a bias to replicate the tastes on which they are trained.
Corporate governance is pivotal for Russian companies to ensure sustainable development, to expand beyond national borders, and to attract foreign investments. This fictitious case illustrates the process for establishing internal corporate governance in a state-owned enterprise, MediaRus, focusing on the role of independent directors in corporate boards. The story of MediaRus's formation and development depicts the evolution of the changing role of the board of directors from an insider model to the outsider model of corporate governance. Readers are encouraged to apply the principles of corporate governance in Russia to the MediaRus case, serving as a point of departure for more detailed analyses of existing codes of good state-owned firms. The case also provides a general overview of current board practices in Russian governmental corporations, highlighting the key tensions faced by independent directors.