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In June 2005, Eddie Bauer, the specialty apparel retailer, emerged from bankruptcy. Under the plan of reorganization former creditors converted their debt into common shares, taking 100% ownership in the reconstituted company. Large banks -- including Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase -- were among the former creditors. In October 2005, Eddie Bauer stock was selling for $24 per share. Analysts were projecting target prices ranging from $22 to $35 per share. Account managers at Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase needed to assess whether to hold or sell their shares in Eddie Bauer.

In February 2007, shareholders of Eddie Bauer, the specialty apparel retailer, were scheduled to vote on management's proposed sale of the company to two private equity firms. More than 50% of outstanding shares in Eddie Bauer needed to be voted in favor of the deal for it to be finalized. Shareholders needed to decide whether to vote for or against the proposed sale, which was fully endorsed by the board of Eddie Bauer.

The Eddie Bauer (B) case describes the events leading up to February 2007, when shareholders of Eddie Bauer, the specialty apparel retailer, were scheduled to vote on management's proposed sale of the company to two private equity firms. The Eddie Bauer (C) case describes what happened and the outlook for the retailer.

In 2009, the CEO of Alacra, a venture-backed information services firm that provides customized data primarily to financial services firms, must decide how to respond to the global economic crisis.

In 1998, the Travelers Group and Citicorp merged to create Citigroup Inc., considered the first true global "financial supermarket," and a business model to be envied, feared and emulated. By year-end 2006 the firm had a market capitalization of $274 billion, with $1.9 trillion in assets and $24.6 billion in earnings. But ten years after the merger it ended in tears. In July of 2009, the firm was effectively nationalized, with billions of dollars in bailout money converted into a 34% ownership stake for the U.S. government. Citigroup was worth less than $16 billion, having lost more than $250 billion in value from its peak. This case examines Citi's business model, challenges it faced, its leadership and key decisions to better understand what contributed to the failure of one of the most powerful financial firms in the world.

"Dr. Benjamin Hooks and Children's Health Forum" charts the many different career paths of Hooks, a civil right activist and pioneer. Hooks' positions ranged from lawyer, judge, preacher, entrepreneur to the first African American commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and to the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to the co-founder of the non-profit Children's Health Forum (CHF). CHF's mission was to eradicate lead poisoning in children in the United States. The case provides an overview of lead poisoning in the U.S., including how it is measured, its causes, and legislation enacted to prevent it. The case asks students to reflect on Hooks' leadership choices and his decision to launch CHF. How would they assess Hooks as a leader? What made him a strong leader? Given Hooks' past experiences, do they think that Hooks made the right decision to focus on lead poisoning after leaving the NAACP? Is this an area where he could have the most impact?

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CaIPERS)-the largest public pension fund in the U.S.-had adopted a new principles-based approach to investing in emerging market equities in November 2007. Previously, CalPERS internal and external money managers were prohibited from investing in certain developing countries because the countries failed to meet certain standards for political stability, human rights, market regulation, etc. The new principles-based approach would allow CalPERS money managers to invest in companies that were financially attractive and competitively positioned provided their business practices were sound from an environmental, social, & governance (ESG) perspective regardless of where they were located. By allowing investment in these types of companies regardless of where they operated, CalPERS had hoped to improve its investment returns. The case is set in January 2009, a little more than a year from the time the principles-based approach had been adopted. It is a good time to review the implementation process and how the new principles-based approach changed CaIPERS' emerging market equities portfolios and their returns. The case focuses on one of CalPERS' external fund managers, Dimensional Fund Advisors, and a service provider to DFA and CalPERS, KLD Research & Analytics. One question facing CalPERS with this new approach is whether to invest in PetroChina, which had been off-limits previously due to the screening criteria that were used to identify which countries qualified for emerging markets investments. The case also raises the issue of the difference between "value" and "values" investing and the future importance of ESG investing.

After years of rapid growth and stock price appreciation, New Century Financial Corporation, one of the largest subprime loan originators in the U.S., reported accounting problems in early 2007. The resulting liquidity crisis forced the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to the Bankruptcy Examiner assigned to investigate New Century, the company's troubles "were an early contributer to the subprime meltdown" which fueled a financial crisis in the U.S. and beyond. The case study examines New Century's business model and accounting practices and focuses on the role of management, audit committee, and external auditors in the problems at New Century based on the findings of the Bankruptcy Examiner.

In 2005, COFCO Ltd., one of China's largest and most successful companies, acquired Xinjiang Tunhe, a tomato processing firm, which had been, in recent years, poorly managed. COFCO changed Tunhe's management team and set out to create a culture of professionalism and impressed upon the employees that the customer came first. Qin Yelong, Tunhe president, had ambitious goals for the company. he wanted Tunhe to be the world's largest supplier of tomato products (primarily paste) within three years. To do so, Tunhe needed to secure relationships with top-of-the-line international customers, such as H.J. Heinz and Unilever. These companies were interested in Tunhe as a supplier, but needed assurances that the company could provide a reliable supply of high quality, competitively priced, and safe tomato paste year in and year out before they would finalize long term contracts with Tunhe. Qin and his management team knew that to be number one, Tunhe would need to take a lead role in modernizing China's current "peasant mode of agriculture." Indeed, Tunhe's tomato supply came from 200,000 mainly uneducated farmers, working small parcels of land (less than 0.2 hectare on average) with little to no mechanization, scattered across the regions of Northwest China. The challenge: How to manage so many farmers (the number was expected to grow to 300,000 if Qin's revenue targets were achieved) so as to ensure consistent tomato quality and safety without dramatically increasing costs. Qin realized that Tunhe had an opportunity to create a new mode of agriculture, which could be the model for all agribusiness in China moving forward. On the other hand, a misstep could lead Heinz and other large international companies to look elsewhere for their supply requirements.

The (A) case describes a series of controversial events and alleged misdeeds that placed Citigroup in the public spotlight and launched investigations into the company's business practices by regulators in Japan and Europe in the fall of 2004. CEO Chuck Prince must decide what to do to right the company and restore its reputation.

The (B) case describes the actions taken by Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince and his management team to right the company in the wake of the controversies and alleged misdeeds described in the (A) case.

Leading index company Dow Jones recently signed a license and joint marketing agreement with Transparent Value LLC, the creator of a new fundamentals-based valuation methodology. The agreement allowed Dow Jones to offer a family of indexes based on the Transparent Value methodology. The methodology viewed stock prices as the clearest and most reliable signals of the market's expectations about a company's future performance, and employed a Reverse Discounted Cash Flow (RDCF) valuation model to calculate the revenue required to support a given stock price for a given company. Then, the methodology applied a probability that the company would achieve the needed revenues in the next 12 months, based on its recent track record. Moreover, the methodology endeavored for specificity. For example, when possible, Transparent Value strove to determine what the company needed to do in its business activities to achieve the required revenues. Called "business performance requirements," these could include the number of new store openings, or the number of product unit sales needed, as two examples. The fictitious case protagonist, a business development manager at a leading money management firm, is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) using a fundamentals-based index as the underlying index. She needs to decide whether to base her ETF products on the Dow Jones - Transparent Value indexes. The case study provides an overview of equity indexes and ETF's and a step-by-step description of Transparent Value's methodology.

The (A) case describes key provisions of the new labor contract law proposed by China's National People's Congress in 2006. The case invites students to consider how domestic and multinational companies should respond to the Chinese government's invitation to comment on the proposal. The case also describes the impetus for the new legislation and initial reaction to the draft by key business groups, legal scholars, and others.

The (B) case describes how the various business groups responded to the Chinese government's invitation to submit comments on its draft labor contract law and details the ensuing global controversy. The (B) case also describes changes made to the working draft and provides an overview of the law as finally enacted in June 2007.

Provides an introduction to the fields of project finance and infrastructure finance, and gives a statistical overview of project-financed investments over the years from 2002 to 2006. Examples of project-financed investments include the $4 billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline, $6 billion Iridium global satellite telecommunications system, $900 million A2 Toll Road in Poland, $1.4 billion Mozal aluminum smelter in Mozambique, and $20 billion Sakhalin II gas field in Russia. Globally, firms financed $328 billion of capital expenditures using project finance in 2006, up from $217 billion in 2001. The use of project finance has grown at a compound rate of 13% over the past 10 years. Focuses primarily on private sector investment in industrial and infrastructure projects, and contains four sections. The first section defines project finance and contrasts it with other well-known financing mechanisms. The second section describes the evolution of project finance from its beginnings in the natural resources industry in the 1970s, to the U.S. power industry in the 1980s, to a much wider range of industry applications and geographic locations in the 1990s, to infrastructure finance in the 2000s. The third section provides a statistical overview of project-financed investment over the last five years (2002 to 2006), and looks at industry, project, and participant specific data. In addition, provides recent data on infrastructure investments and public-private partnerships. The final section discusses current and likely future trends.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 207107.

Following a successful model in Europe, JP Morgan has introduced a set of five U.S. retail mutual funds with an investment philosophy and marketing strategy grounded in behavioral finance. The asset management group believes that understanding investor biases like overconfidence, anchoring, and loss aversion is key to generating returns on the investment side and educating clients on the advisory side.

Supplements the (A) case.

Hedge fund SAC Capital and analysts from Gradient Analytics and Banc of America face charges of stock price manipulation from Biovail, a Canadian pharmaceutical company. Gradient and BofA produced negative reports on Biovail's earnings quality. At the same time, SAC built a large short position in the stock. The defendants must consider specific and general strategic responses to these allegations.