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Acme Investment Trust is considering investing in a private equity partnership that is seeking only 15% of the profits, instead of the standard 20%. The management fee requested, however, is higher than in its earlier fund. The pension managers must consider the financial and organizational consequences of this shift.

Bob O'Connell, CFO of General Motors, is considering a variety of equity alternatives to fund a large shortfall over the next couple of years. His tasks are to map out a financing strategy for the long term and to choose the equity instrument to be issued immediately. Of particular interest to O'Connell is a new security called PERCS (preferred equity redemption cumulative stock).

Discusses the negotiation of a possible trademark infringement involving a German conglomerate and a Taiwanese trading firm.

Supplement to case 396156. Presents a series of multiple choice options to be distributed and discussed in class.

The senior financial analyst for Kingston-Murray Enterprises, must decide what funding technique to recommend to the company's chief financial officer. The firm's recent discoveries of gold and sulfur reserves have created a need for $500 million in operating cash. Because of the company's low credit rating and high cost of borrowing, senior management has restricted the financing choices to either common stock or convertible bonds. The zero-coupon convertible under consideration is a LYON (liquid-yield option note). Before recommending whether to issue LYONs, the analyst wants to understand fully the details of these subordinate, zero-coupon, callable, putable, convertible notes.

Describes the six steps included in most reengineering initiatives: selecting the processes for reengineering; identifying change enablers; developing a business vision of process objectives; understanding and measuring existing processes; designing and prototyping the new processes; and implementing the new processes.

Charlie LeMantia, the president and CEO of Arthur D. Little (ADL), a leading consulting firm, is trying to decide whether the firm has a complete and effective corporate strategy. The case traces ADL's history, its rise to prominence and subsequent decline, and LeMantia's efforts to turn the organization around. Special attention is devoted to his introduction of process thinking and process management, and their impact on the way the company is managed.

This case gives a broad overview of the global property and casualty insurance industry. Topics covered include insurance economics and risk bearing, insurance accounting, risk-based capital, catastrophic risk, underwriting cycles, the Lloyd's crisis, reinsurance, and the rise of the Bermudian reinsurers.

Explores the origins of reengineering; its evolution during the 1980s and 1990s; the current state of reengineering, which is prevalent in business today; and several possible futures of reengineering, specifically in relation to process management, knowledge work, and participative work design.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 296033.

Documents the successful launch of Northern Telecom's Norstar Key Systems product line. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Explains variance analysis. Concepts of price variance and quantity variance are introduced to analyze prime cost variances. Spending variance and capacity variance are used to analyze overhead variance. Consistent with conducting variance analysis in an activity-based costing setting. All concepts are illustrated graphically.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 196109.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 296036

The case visits the catastrophe insurance business at an interesting time in the history of the insurance markets. A major reinsurer, National Insurance, is taking a look at the new insurance derivatives being traded on the Chicago Board of Trade with a view to using them for risk management and as a portfolio option.

Growing fiscal deficits, persistent economic recession, and underinvestment in the nation's telecommunications infrastructure lead the Argentine government to privatize its state-owned monopoly provider of telecommunications services, ENTel, in late 1990. The privatization process and the resulting ownership structure is complex, and the new regulatory framework appears to offer both significant opportunities and risks for investors.

Mike Ennis, general manager of Northern Telecom's Business Products Division, recommends a new solution for replacing Vantage, an unsuccessful product for Northern Telecom. The case documents in detail the voice of the customer. Students are required to discuss the merits of Ennis's proposal.

Matt Dorman, owner of this custom bunk-bed manufacturer, is considering a move to a new location. Students must perform a process-and-bottleneck analysis to evaluate the viability of the move. Economic justification involves calculation of the increased capacity available at the new location. See also the video UVA-OM-0818V.

Real estate escapes the thoughtful attention of most senior managers. It often falls within the realm of their responsibilities, but many do not appreciate its potential impact on company performance. So they delegate real estate to specialists, who operate on a deal-by-deal basis and consider their decisions as administrative and technical tasks. Recently, however, some companies--IBM, AT&T, Chemical Bank, Dun & Bradstreet, and Sun Microsystems, for example--have recognized that by managing real estate as a business function, they can cut costs significantly and, at the same time, increase productivity.