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In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora, revealed how the country's most respected financial institutions knowingly misled investors as to the desirability of certain securities, engaged in irresponsible investment behavior, and offered privileges to insiders not afforded to ordinary investors. During the famous "Hundred Day" congressional session that began his presidency, Roosevelt signed two bills meant to prevent some of these abuses, but he also believed that the government should play a more active role in the financial system by regulating national securities exchanges. In February 1934, the president urged Congress to enact such legislation, prompting the introduction of a bill entitled the Securities Exchange Act, which would force all securities exchanges to register with the Federal Trade Commission, would curtail the size of loans that could be advanced to securities investors, and would ban a number of practices (such as short-selling) that were thought to facilitate stock manipulation. Additionally, the legislation would require that all companies with exchange-listed securities publish detailed business reports as frequently as the FTC desired. Wall Street, represented in particular by New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) President Richard Whitney, took a strong position against the Securities Exchange Act. Whitney was ultimately summoned to testify during the congressional hearings on the Securities Exchange Act in late February 1934. Would he be able to convince lawmakers to take a different course, or would his arguments fail to win over those who believed that strict regulations were exactly what financial markets required following the Great Crash?

Dave Roux, co-founder and chairman of Silver Lake, a private equity (PE) firm specializing in technology investments, was meeting with the firm's investment committee via video conference to discuss options for Silver Lake's future growth. While the private equity market had suffered since the economic crisis in the fall of 2008, Roux believed a number of opportunities still existed. There was significant interest within the firm to continue to offer new asset class investment products and to open additional outposts in foreign countries. Nonetheless, questions had risen internally regarding how much and in which directions to grow. Roux wondered how the firm could take advantage of the market potential while continuing to remain true to its original vision.

The 'Cola Wars Continue: Coke and Pepsi in 2010' case examines the industry structure and competitive strategy of Coca-Cola and Pepsi over 100 years of rivalry. The most intense battles of the cola wars were fought over the $74 billion CSD industry in the United States, where the average American consumes 46 gallons of CSD per year. In a "carefully waged competitive struggle," from 1975 to the mid-1990s, both Coke and Pepsi had achieved average annual growth of around 10%, as both U.S. and worldwide CSD consumption consistently rose. However, starting in the late 1990s, U.S. CSD consumption started to decline and new non-sparkling beverages become popular, threatening to alter the companies' brand, bottling, and pricing strategies. The case considers what has to be done for Coke and Pepsi to ensure sustainable growth and profitability. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

This note introduces the importance to family businesses of drafting a family constitution to maintain success and continuity of governance of the family's enterprises. The process of family members/owners being involved in making the draft provides the most value for the enterprise, more so than the content of the finished product.

Grainger is a distributor of MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) equipment, based in the US. Most revenues were from the US in 2008, but Grainger was positioning itself to expand its limited global presence. Grainger was increasing the volume of private-label products, which offer higher margins and meet price points. These private label products were sourced primarily from China, by a separate business unit (Grainger Global Sourcing, or GGS) within Grainger. The GGS network, as of 2008, had significant cost inefficiencies. Furthermore, the network was not well-suited for increasing global sales of the private label products. The task in the case is to re-engineer the supply chain to improve efficiencies and better position Grainger for global growth.

Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright were fascinated by the mystery of flight and they built on the ideas of prominent earlier figures such as Octave Chanute (1832-1910) the French-born American who was influential in fostering the free exchange of ideas surrounding aeronautics. Information exchange between practical tinkerers from across the globe led to a process of cumulative innovation unhindered by rivalry operating through the intellectual property rights system. Yet in 1903, the year the Wright Brothers achieved controlled sustained flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they applied for and were subsequently granted a US patent for a "flying-machine" which changed the industry irrevocably. While American manufacturers diverted resources from science and technology to patent wars and legal disputes, European aeronautics advanced more rapidly.

From 2004-2009, almost 40,000 mass layoffs occurred in the US, representing over 7 million workers. This note describes the effects of layoffs on employees, firms, and communities.

This note reviews decision criteria for carrying out a layoff, best practices for implementation, and ways that managers can prepare themselves to conduct a layoff.

Even before Australian lawmakers abolished university tuition in 1973, students in Australia had long benefited from low tuition and large government subsidies. By the early 1980s, however, the nation's universities faced growing budget challenges and an apparent shortage of capacity as demand for higher education surged. Policymakers, cognizant of a growing budget deficit as well as a hard-hitting recession, hesitated to provide increased funding to higher education. The debate over how best to finance Australian higher education finally came to a head in the late 1980s, following publication of the Report of the Committee on Higher Education Funding (commonly known as the Wran Report). Although the Wran Committee had considered several potential funding schemes, it ultimately proposed a radical system in which students would pay tuition financed through income-contingent loans provided by the government. The Wran Report proved to be of particular interest to the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Hawke. The government's fiscal position seemed to demand that educational financing be overhauled, but there was no consensus on how best to do this. Could the Prime Minister convince his Australian Labor Party to abandon the free-education plank in its platform? And even if he could, how could he be sure that the Wran Committee's strategy was the right one and that its recommendations were workable? Would following an American model of full tuition for higher education and government-guaranteed student loans make more sense? These were just a few of the questions that the Prime Minister confronted as he contemplated new approaches for financing higher education in Australia.

Qualcomm in 2009 and 2010 experienced both the worst of times and the best of times. During the "great recession" of 2009, smartphones growth stalled, stalling Qualcomm's revenue, but in 2010 growth surged again, and was predicted to continue its upward trajectory in 2011. This brief case updates Qualcomm's struggles with FLO TV and BREW, while outlining the new opportunities for Qualcomm in emerging categories such as tablet computers, displays, and new operating systems for smartphones.

Celanese, a global leader in the chemical industry, had spent a number of years implementing a single instance ERP solution and integrating the divisional IT functions into a shared services model. Around 2007, after years of application and IT service growth, many in Celanese IT believed that their internal operations were in desperate need of tighter coordination and process discipline. They looked to Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to guide their process integration effort. This case describes the first three years of the IT organization's journey with the ITIL process framework.

In 2007, Walmart was sourcing approximately $750 million in seafood annually. Although output from the world's fisheries had declined to 3 percent of production levels in the year 1900, the company's volume of seafood business was growing at roughly 25 percent per year. Against this backdrop, Peter Redmond, vice president for seafood and deli, believed that continuity of supply was the single greatest long-term issue facing the seafood network. To help address this challenge as part of the company's recently-announced sustainability strategy, Walmart set a goal to transition to selling 100 percent MSC certified wild-caught seafood by the end of 2011. To accomplish its goal of selling only certified wild-caught fish, Walmart would have to work through its suppliers to increase the number of fisheries and processing plants in the MSC certification program. This case describes MSC certification and the salmon supply chain from the point of view of one of Walmart's tier-one seafood suppliers. It provides enough detail that students should be able to make recommendations regarding how should Walmart rationalize its seafood supply chain to reduce costs and promote sustainability.

This case illustrates the complexity and importance of hiring decisions in the Chinese operation of a global design and innovation firm.

This case presents two vignettes from the perspective of Laura White, a newly-promoted manager of the Cook Islands operations for a large Australian bank. In Vignette A, White learns of the existence of an Offshore Banking Unit (OBU) - the source of significant revenue to the Islands' economy - in which the customers' identities are unknown. The bank has just brought on a new CEO who has emphasized the importance of transparency and knowing your customer. Given the context of the CEO's philosophy and White's new role as manager, she must decide whether or not to raise her concerns to her manager regarding the OBU. Vignette B provides further history on White's previous experience with an ethical scandal in the bank. After having been told by her manager that bringing more attention to the Cook Islands' OBU banking operations will only cause more problems, she must decide once again if and how to elevate the issue.

This case is written from the perspective of a member of Oracle's valuation team during Oracle's bid to acquire Sun Microsystems in 2009. Sun was an industry leader in the IT sector, and it had many suitors, including IBM. Oracle had distinguished itself as the world's largest and most reputable sellers of database management systems and other related software, and it had recently acquired several low-margin companies and turned them into higher-margin operations. Combining Sun and Oracle had the potential to create the Wal-Mart of the enterprise software industry. A supplemental student spreadsheet is available to verified users.

This technical note supports the "Shrimp Commodity Systems Learning Lab" (SCSLL) simulation (UVA-OM-1405S) used in environmental sustainability or systems thinking courses. It offers detailed guidance for the progression of interactive learning experiences in the SCSLL. Through the simulation, users develop an understanding of the issues facing the shrimp industry system and how policy alternatives could improve the industry's typical boom-and-bust patterns. A teaching note (OM-1428TN) is available.

Spreadsheet Supplement for UV2930.

This case follows Laura Milanes as she defines the problems facing Midco Pharmaceuticals, a leading manufacturer of store brand over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and vitamins. Students analyze Midco's new-product development (NPD) process. This requires critical-path, capacity, and process flow analysis. Students then conduct a cost-benefit analysis and make recommendations.

This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital-backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than 10% returns). As an asset, class, venture capital has produced high cyclical returns that mirror trends in capital markets and in markets for new technology. There is a large disparity in median and upper quantize performance. A small number of funds do well on a constant basis. Overall returns on venture capital have been low for the decade ending in 2009.      

Todovino sells Spanish wines through wine clubs and web sites. Founder-CEO Gonzalo Verdera has partnered with many companies to create cobranded wine clubs, but now he is pondering a joint venture with one of his rivals, a brick-and-mortar wine chain. Todovino would provide the online presence for the chain. Should Verdera help his rival? What are the risks and benefits for Todovino?