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This case is a supplement to Toyota: Accelerator Pedal Recall (A).

Ruwwad was a youth-centric community development organization aimed at empowering and supporting marginalized and underdeveloped communities in the Arab world. It had launched numerous programs revolving around three main components: 1) youth empowerment, 2) community empowerment, and 3) child development. Samar Dudin, regional head and program manager of Ruwwad, was reflecting on the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges that Ruwwad faced in its home operation so that she could present her recommendations to the board of directors (BOD) on Friday. Her main concern was to present to the BOD a reasoned plan on how to expand the Ruwwad model and how to strengthen the partnerships required to scale up the impact of the model in the future.

In May 2011, Alan Joyce, chief executive officer of Qantas Group, needed to think about the future strategy of the airline group. Over the past few years, it had launched a number of strategic initiatives to defend its current position and penetrate new markets and segments. Qantas had discontinued its first-class service on many flights, opting to bolster its business-class service instead. Its forays into the budget travel segment through Jetstar proved to be successful and contributed to the overall financial performance of the group. Qantas had also placed a bet on emerging economies such as China, despite experiencing adverse performance in its international routes. However, the financial performance of the company was far from healthy. Qantas was fighting hard to retain its Australian position in the face of attempts by Virgin Blue and Tiger Airways to compete aggressively and gain market share. Analysts wondered whether Qantas was trying to do too much and, in the process, spreading itself too thinly. Would the Qantas Group be better off simply prioritizing across its various alternatives, or did it have sufficient resources (financial as well as managerial) to pursue all the initiatives? And if a narrow focus was better, then which strategic alternatives should Qantas pursue aggressively?

The president of Zeus Strategic Investments Inc. was reviewing an acquisition opportunity related to a spin-off of a division of Maxim Automotive. This opportunity was exactly the type of thing that excited the president — a non-strategic business unit within a large industrial organization that faced significant challenges in forming into a standalone business. The president felt that it provided an excellent opportunity to create significant value in a very short period of time with a very small amount of equity. <br><br>He was particularly concerned about getting a clear grasp on the historical and projected financial statements provided by Maxim. Historical financial information would need to be extracted from the Maxim corporate records and adjusted to reflect the anticipated transaction, including removing some corporate allocations and reflecting the potential additional costs of operating the business on a standalone basis. The president was also concerned about the accounting for liabilities and potential liabilities in the division statements, as most often these liabilities were carried at the corporate level, rather than at the division level.

Netflix, Inc. was a fast-growing U.S. DVD-rental and video-streaming service that had just entered the Canadian market. This case covers the period immediately following its entry into Canada with a low-price monthly subscription service through which viewers could get video content streamed to their TVs or multimedia devices. Netflix’s entry threatened to change the way video content was viewed in Canada and, as such, it had the potential to heavily impact a number of incumbents in Canada, such as Blockbuster. Netflix’s streaming-only model in Canada created a new service for customers that was not necessarily as strong as the offering in the United States; for instance, the range of titles was relatively limited. The Netflix entry also provided potential benefits for some players, such as Rogers, who could profit from increased Internet usage. This meant that the reaction from players was not immediately obvious.

This note is an introduction to Solver in Excel and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Solver is a Microsoft Excel tool that determines variables and objective function values of linear, integer, binary, and non-linear optimization models. These models are used in insurance, finance, operations, logistics, engineering, and medicine. This note uses screenshots to help demonstrate various examples of the use of Solver, including assembling a portfolio of ideal stocks and assigning the location of fire stations in cities.

A publicly traded mining company has an opportunity to develop a mine containing gold, cobalt, and bismuth in Canada’s Northwest Territories and must determine the financial viability of doing so. In order to gauge the attractiveness of the project, the company needs to evaluate the net present value of the opportunity, given volatile and uncertain variables, such as commodity prices and foreign exchange rates. The company must also consider a number of qualitative considerations that may affect the project, such as relations with First Nations communities.

This case depicts a financial analyst trying to make sense of Starbucks’ finances and drawing from recent projects of the IASB and FASB to identify lease accounting as a key issue for the firm. The case underscores the importance of having a full picture of a company’s obligations in order to understand its overall performance.<br><br> In reviewing the case, students examine Starbucks’ extensive use of leases and use spreadsheet tools to understand the full extent of the corporation’s indebtedness. Although heavy users of leases such as Starbucks have argued that lease accounting is complex, an estimation of lease indebtedness can be made using relatively simple tools that are easy for students to understand. The case allows issues of high-level accounting standards to be elucidated, using a well-known company with which students identify. The case illustrates the real-world consequences of accounting policy choices.

De Kuyper Royal Distillers was a 300-year-old family firm in the Netherlands and produced the largest variety of liqueurs in the world. The firm had always been owned and controlled by the De Kuyper family. In 2009, Bob de Kuyper, the 10th generation to own and run the firm, retired from his position as managing director and an outsider was brought in as the interim managing director. In January 2010, Marc de Kuyper, the eldest son of Bob de Kuyper, worked for an outside firm in a marketing position. He had a strong desire to join the family firm and was trying to decide how to convince his father, and the family firm's supervisory board, that he had the capabilities to eventually take a leadership role in the family business. Was there a future for Marc at the family firm? What could he do, if anything, in the succession process?

New York Fries’ president and executive vice president were preparing for the next biannual meeting of domestic and international franchisees. They planned to provide an update on all aspect of corporate strategy and planning for the year ahead, but they only had a few days to formulate a new international growth strategy. The president and executive vice president were hesitant to expand into new territories partly due to poor experiences in Australia and South Korea, yet international franchisees had encouraged them to investigate promising areas of expansion into China and India. Complicating matters was the future development of the company’s chain of premium hamburger restaurants. While New York Fries was a well-received brand in Canada, it had not yet decided if and how to internationalize the brand. How could the president and executive vice president pursue new opportunities while maintaining their premium brands of French fries and hamburgers?

In October 2005, PPG pioneered a new business model for online apparel retailing in China. Targeting men’s low-end apparel, PPG’s new model met with great initial success due to its responsive supply chain, lighter distribution channel (i.e. no physical stores), and costly advertising. However, underlying limitations of PPG’s business model led to its eventual failure. Followers learned from both PPG’s successes and failures. VANCL, another online apparel retailer, provided a good example of the evolution of a business model that created a leader in the online retail industry. To show the evolving characteristics of the apparel retailing business model, this case describes a successive two-stage story, in which each company made improvements based on other forerunners.

This case is a supplement to Fabric Super-Store (A).

The managing director at a major investment bank is preparing his team for a visit to Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company. The investment bank has been following Lululemon’s development over the past few years and is impressed by the company’s unique positioning and rapid growth. The bank believes that there is a window of opportunity for Lululemon’s founder and private equity investors to either undertake an initial public offering or raise debt to fund Lululemon’s U.S. expansion.

The controller of a publicly traded mining company must make a series of recommendations to the chief executive officer and chief financial officer of the company as it prepares to adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Major decisions revolve around accounting for the company’s fixed assets and mining properties — specifically, whether to capitalize or expense certain items, whether to record certain assets at their values of historical costs, the company’s depreciation policy, and other issues around impairments of capital assets. The controller also considers the recent International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) discussion paper on accounting for extractive resources and its possible implications to the company in the future.

By 2011, many nations had experienced an escalation in deficits and debt. It appeared that some might be unable to service their debt, and might have to default. The United States had a budget crisis in which “left-wing liberal” Democrats wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy while “right-wing conservative” Republicans wanted to cut expenditures. A philosophical divide existed over the role of personal responsibility versus the role of government. In the European Union, the “PIIGS” — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain — seemed on the verge of default, and other members of the eurozone created new loan programs to assist them in their budget crises. However, these loans included a requirement to move towards balanced budgets. Citizens in the borrowing nations objected to the severe tax increases and expenditure cuts, while citizens of the successful nations asked why they should have to pay. It was not clear who would bear the burden of reducing the deficits and debt.

Two entrepreneurs were investigating Fabric Super-Store franchise ownership opportunities available to them in Ontario, Canada. The Fabric Super-Store had 68 locations worldwide, comprised of both corporate-owned and -operated stores and licensed franchises. It had recently undertaken to convert all existing corporate-owned stores to franchises. The entrepreneurs had recently re-located to the area after several years pursuing different careers in the United States. Unable to find significant meaningful employment, they decided to pursue franchise-ownership. The Fabric Super-Store appealed to them due to its high-margin product, little competition, low overhead, and steady supply of customers. Recognizing their limitations in terms of finances and product unfamiliarity, the entrepreneurs had to determine the critical points to be negotiated into their proposal for becoming a Fabric Super-Store franchisee.

This case is a supplement to Fabric Super-Store (A).

Microsoft Excel offers a suite of graphical user interface (GUI) tools that can be used with Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code. These tools enable the creation of programs with a customized appearance and function. Thus, highly complex models can be made simple to use.<br><br>This note, using explanations and examples with screenshots, is designed to give readers an overview of the available GUI and debugging tools within Excel VBA. It is intended for students who already have experience with basic VBA programming.

Variables are used to keep changeable information or values such as text, dates, and numbers used in a macro or Visual Basic Application (VBA) code. A logical statement is a collection of Boolean-type expressions that can be either true or false, and logical operators are used in Excel VBA to connect logical statements. <br><br>This note is an introduction to variables and logical statements in Excel VBA with brief definitions and examples. It includes different data types for variable declaration, logical statements, logical operators, if-then statements, and case structures.

On April 11, 2011, the merger between Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (the parent company of XM Canada) and SIRIUS Canada Inc. received the approval of CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). This was the last obstacle standing in the way of the president and CEO of the new organization. The president had had plenty of time to prepare for this merger since it was first announced in November of 2010. However, with only a few months before the implementation plan was to go into place, the president was once more reviewing the proposal that he had prepared. The merger of XM Canada and SIRIUS Canada was not going to be easy. Both organizations had been fierce competitors, but it was clear that their survival was dependant on a successful merger. The president’s plan had to consider the make-up of the management team, the consolidated marketing strategy, operations and information systems integration, and how all of this was to be financed.