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Describes the Spine Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a multidisciplinary unit that offers patients suffering from spinal problems "one-stop" access to a range of providers including orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, neurologists, medical specialists in physical medicine and pain management, mental health providers, and occupational and physical therapists. The Center was created to address what its founder, James Weinstein, M.D., saw as the uncoordinated and inefficient delivery of spinal care in the United States. The Center emphasized using non-surgical treatments (e.g., physical therapy and exercise, behavioral modification, pain-relieving drugs) as either a complement to, or substitute for, surgical procedures, and patients were actively engaged in the process of determining what type of care to pursue. In addition, Weinstein and his staff collected data from the Center's clinical practice to conduct academic research on the outcomes and cost-effectiveness of various approaches to treatment. The case allows for a critical analysis of the Spine Center's unique approach to care delivery and provides an opportunity to examine the applicability of this model in other clinical areas.

This note is a primer on the newspaper industry, which has been in decline in the U.S. and Western Europe. The 19th century business model whereby news and editorial content was packaged and delivered to homes daily and paid for by national advertisers has been overturned by the internet and the corresponding immediate access to global information. The note covers the history of newspapers, industry economics, current news consumption trends, the response of the newspapers to the threat of the internet, and vignettes highlighting newspaper business models throughout the world.

Robert D. Walter built Cardinal Health into the most valuable company in the U.S. health care services industry and the world's largest distributor of health care products. With revenues of $81 billion in 2006, it was ranked Number 19 on the Fortune 500 list, and owned a third of the drug distribution business; yet most people had never heard of Cardinal Health. The case begins in 1979 with Walter's purchase of Monarch Foods, a wholesale food distribution company, which he built into a strong regional food wholesaler, Cardinal Foods, in the subsequent decade. Through a series of acquisitions, Walter repositioned the company into the pharmaceutical distribution industry. The result was the emergence of Cardinal Health, Inc. Cardinal was one of a handful of large U.S. companies that had achieved earnings-per-share growth in excess of 20 percent for 15 years straight. Nevertheless, by 2007, Wall Street was questioning whether Cardinal Health could continue to grow at this remarkable rate through acquisitions. This general doubt, coupled with questionable "stock crushing" accounting practices among wholesalers, including one of their own suppliers, was weighing down Cardinal's stock price despite their continued earnings growth. Cardinal Health, the merger and acquisition juggernaut, had hit an earnings speed bump. As Walter contemplated retirement, he was faced with the challenge of reinventing the company one last time.

In November 2006, Alec Berg, a successful hedge fund manager, must decide whether to invest in the initial public offering (IPO) of the Hertz Corporation. The IPO followed a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Hertz that was completed in December 2005 by three prominent private equity firms that had combined to purchase Hertz from the Ford Motor Company for $14.9 billion. The LBO sponsors had borrowed an additional $1 billion on top of the buyout financing to pay themselves a special dividend in June 2006. This loan would be repaid with the IPO proceeds and any remaining proceeds from the IPO would go to the sponsors. The IPO generated widespread criticism with respect to the speed with which the IPO was conducted and the payment of special dividends. In the face of this criticism, the demand for the Hertz IPO weakened, and the offer price was reduced from the initial file price range of $16-$18 to just $15. Berg must assess whether at $15 per share, Hertz offers an attractive investment for this fund. The case provides the necessary information for students to analyze the sponsors' returns on their investment in Hertz and the attractiveness of the $15 offer price to public shareholders. The case also offers an opportunity for students to discuss the controversy surrounding the payment of special dividends and the claim that private equity sponsors invest with a long-term perspective that creates value for the company.

In early September 2008, in the midst of the subprime crisis, a manager with the student-run Darden Capital Management fund, wants to evaluate whether Comerica Incorporated, a regional bank based in Dallas, Texas, is a good candidate for inclusion in his portfolio. He needs to perform a valuation of the bank to assert whether the bank seems to be undervalued by the market or whether a further decline in value might be possible. He must account for all the factors that affect bank valuation, both as related to the bank itself as well as to the current market conditions. The case can be taught to: a) examine the valuation of a bank during turbulent times; b) understand the key accounting statements (balance sheet and income statement) for a bank and how they may differ from those for an industrial company; and c) understand the key value drivers of bank value (metrics for profitability, credit quality, liquidity, and capital).

Colfax Corporation was a young, privately held collection of pump-manufacturing companies from the United States and Europe. Intending to go public, it was eager to find a story for investors of how it could grow at rates faster than its subsidiaries had historically grown in their home regions and core-customer industrial markets. This case describes a singular new-growth opportunity: selling Colfax solutions into state-owned petroleum enterprises in the Middle East at a time when these producers were straining to add capacity. Designing the optimal marketing system required Colfax to weigh a complex of issues, including global resource allocation and deployment, a process for customer-relationship building, and estimates for revenue streams versus investment outlays. The design process was, in short, far more than "sticking sales rep pins in the map." Case readers are asked to think along with the Colfax global management team in deciding, "How much can we afford to risk our current income model in order to build new capacity in a new region in a new way?"

This case is a follow-up to SPM-39A, which described three eras of the Anaheim Ducks NHL hockey team. In 2007, the team won the Stanley Cup (the NHL championship). This case describes the opportunities and challenges facing team management as a result of winning the Stanley Cup.

As equity consideration has become more popular in acquisitions, so has the use of the "pricing-protection" mechanisms, such as floors, caps and collars. These contractual devices provide insurance to the shareholders of the target, and may protect the buyer as well. The purpose of this note is to define the main categories of price protection, and explain their impact on the payoffs and value of the deal to the target's shareholders.

This case introduces risk management in the context of corporate lending, one of the bread-and-butter functions of commercial banks. It evokes the cultural tension between the risk function and the business line, which in this organization reverberated long after the decisive votes were cast at the group credit committee. The case further motivates debate on calculative cultures, and the role of model-based risk assessments in decision-making, and underlines the role of judgment in risk decisions. Modeling and judgment carry different weight in different types of risk decisions. While risk models can be relied upon as the key decision-makers in a retail banking environment (e.g. credit card applications), in the case of large credit decisions, their reliability is, generally, low. This is because the key features of the proposals at hand cannot all be condensed into risk metrics; as in these proposals, several "qualitative" issues arise that the decision-maker needs to judge in tandem with the quantitative metrics. The exercise also highlights that model-based risk metrics are themselves judgmental (they reflect the assumptions of the modeler) and that their use must be as much an art as a science. The story has got a temporal dimension: one proposal was current in mid-2006, the other in late 2008, two very different credit environments.

TOTO, the leading manufacturer of toilets in Japan, is struggling to penetrate the US market with its premier bidet-toilets, which are present in 63% of homes in Japan. The case examines the behavioral, cultural, and institutional barriers that TOTO faces in gaining adoption of an innovation. It also explores the role of product categorization in driving consumer behavior - in contrast to the US, toilets in Japan are considered a high-tech consumer electronic device. Finally, the role of organizational identity and culture is examined. The creation of the bidet-toilet category in Japan was a defining accomplishment for TOTO, and this history has created a strong commitment to promoting it in the US. But given that TOTO has been highly successful selling regular high-end toilets in the US, is this commitment to the bidet-toilet appropriate?

T.J., an undergraduate at a business school, was upset to find a group mate's contribution to his group project containing plagiarized and poorly paraphrased content (also without any citation as to source in some instances). T.J. and four others had to work with K.C., the errant group member, on three group projects that together made up 30 per cent of the final mark for the course. In particular, T.J. was upset by the shoddy corrections provided by K.C. when his error was highlighted. T.J. was also appalled at K.C.'s nonchalant attitude towards plagiarism and the group projects, especially after discovering that K.C. had done the same on their first group project. T.J. felt strongly that the matter should be brought up to the course professor but two of his group mates disagreed, fearing that the group harmony would be adversely affected, thus jeopardizing their last group project, which carried significantly higher weight at 20 per cent. The remaining two group mates did not seem to consider the matter a serious one. T.J. wondered what the right thing to do would be. This case was written for use in the introductory class to a business ethics course. However, it has potential for use in lessons on negotiation, conflict resolution and team dynamics. The case is based on an actual occurrence but names have been changed to provide anonymity. The subject of plagiarism and a poorly contributing group member to group assignments is one that resonates deeply with students pursuing any course that emphasizes group work as a necessary component of the course assessment. The case has practical relevance to the working world inasmuch as the incident can occur in that context. Apart from being a useful opener to any course on ethics, the case also serves as a good reminder to students about plagiarism. It provides opportunities for clarification and discussion on what exactly constitutes plagiarism and the professors'/universities' stand on the matter.

In November 2006, Alec Berg, a successful hedge fund manager, must decide whether to invest in the initial public offering (IPO) of the Hertz Corporation. The IPO followed a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Hertz that was completed in December 2005 by three prominent private equity firms that had combined to purchase Hertz from the Ford Motor Company for $14.9 billion. The LBO sponsors had borrowed an additional $1 billion on top of the buyout financing to pay themselves a special dividend in June 2006. This loan would be repaid with the IPO proceeds and any remaining proceeds from the IPO would go to the sponsors. The IPO generated widespread criticism with respect to the speed with which the IPO was conducted and the payment of special dividends. In the face of this criticism, the demand for the Hertz IPO weakened, and the offer price was reduced from the initial file price range of $16-$18 to just $15. Berg must assess whether at $15 per share, Hertz offers an attractive investment for this fund. The case provides the necessary information for students to analyze the sponsors' returns on their investment in Hertz and the attractiveness of the $15 offer price to public shareholders. The case also offers an opportunity for students to discuss the controversy surrounding the payment of special dividends and the claim that private equity sponsors invest with a long-term perspective that creates value for the company.

Commercial Director Prado wonders how to leverage the loyalty card information to prepare the Fall 2008 budget. The case discusses the value of subjective and objective information for profit planning purposes. Spanish children's apparel retailer Neck & Neck uses loyalty card information for tactical purposes, such as promotional campaigns. Its management team is thinking about how to incorporate that information to the budgeting (profit planning) process. From an analytical standpoint the case looks at the surprising results of a mailing campaign that reveals the consequences of inadequate updating of the customer database. Also, the budgeting data in the case may be used to teach regression model selection and R-squared.

In 2007, HOYA of Japan must decide whether to change its friendly exchange offer for Pentax into a hostile cash tender offer. A surprising sequence of events had caused a friendly merger agreement to fall apart, resulting in a boardroom coup at Pentax and the intervention of the Sparx Group, an indigenous activist Japanese hedge fund. The case raises issues about corporate valuation, corporate governance, shareholder activism, takeover deal tactics, and the Japanese market for corporate control.

HOYA Corporation (B) provides details on the decisions made and the outcome of the situations described in the HOYA Corporation (A) case.

Most companies around the world are controlled by their founding families, including more than half of all public corporations in the U.S. and Europe, and more than two thirds of these in Asia. These companies are the subject of the Financial Management of Family and Closely Held Firms course, an elective MBA course at Harvard Business School. The course introduces students to the unique finance, governance, and management issues faced by family firms, and to the ways in which these issues can be addressed. The course provides students with a framework for analyzing how family ownership, control, and management affect value, and whether and how more value can be created for the various stakeholders in family firms. The course is designed for students who may be involved with these companies in a variety of roles, including those of founders, shareholders, or managers of their own family's firm, as well as those of non-family managers and employees, investors or business partners (e.g., private equity investors), and advisors of various kinds (e.g., Investment bankers, board members, or consultants).

This case traces the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League through three distinct eras, beginning with the teams founding and initial success (1992-1997), through a period of ownership turmoil and financial loss (1998-2004), and then new ownership and rebuilding (2005-2008). It discusses issues both on and off the ice, including ownership business strategy (such as the Disney Company's strategy for using the team to promote tourism to Anaheim, site of Disneyland, and to promote its Mighty Ducks films). The case also discusses branding and other strategic issues addressed during each era by the team's various owners.

February 2008. Lando Simonetti was enjoying the relative cool of his Cucha Cucha office in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It may have been cool, but definitely not quiet. His desire to always be in the middle of the action at the company also meant he had to live through the noise of the factory. This ability to stay in close contact with people and realities on the ground had been instrumental in building La Martina from a modest polo equipment provider to the premier polo brand in the world, with global sales in excess of US$200 million. La Martina was not about polo: it was polo. As an Argentinean of Italian origin, Lando could not have felt prouder to have conquered Europe. At 65, he had reached the pinnacle of the sport he loved so much. A few nagging questions lingered. The brand was being pushed more and more into fashion, a move he had strongly resisted so far. How would this affect its sustainability? La Martina had never been about fashion; it produced and sold functional polo equipment. Polo had become fashionable, and so had its products. Should he fight the trend or capitalize on it? What would that mean for the company? Fashion also meant growth. So far, he had stubbornly pursued only self-financed growth. Perhaps it was time to consider raising more capital. Learning objectives: Building a brand, managing growth, globalizing.

March 2008. Lando Simonetti, founder and CEO of La Martina was pacing around his office in the Buenos Aires suburbs. Not so long ago, the offer that had just landed in his in-box would have been relegated to the trash bin within seconds. He had always been fervently committed to the independence of his firm - independence from investors, boards of directors, banks and politicians. From a local polo equipment producer, La Martina had become one of the most recognized global brand names in polo and fashion alike. He would have preferred to stay true to the brand's DNA, rooted in the estancia lifestyle and the polo game, delivering functional polo equipment. But that no longer seemed possible since the fashion industry had discovered the brand and transformed it into a fashion icon. This time the offer was different. It came from Tribeca Partners, a reputed South American private equity firm in Bogotá that had developed a serious fashion specialty. It had recently concluded its first deal in Argentina, acquiring one of La Martina's local competitors, Etiqueta Negra, with a view to taking it global. The company clearly knew about fashion and Argentina was on its radar screen. The offer was rock solid, valuing the company at close to three times sales and ten times EBIT. Was it time to let go? Learning objectives: Discuss exit planning, harvesting, private equity, growth management, and the fashion industry.