In October 2015, Ho Ren Hua took over as CEO of Thailand-based Thai Wah Public Company (TWPC), a family-owned business supplying starch and starch-related food products. Since then, he had introduced several changes to professionalise the company, which included introducing more independent directors who were highly-qualified with experience in multinational corporations (MNCs), bringing in an end-to-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, formalising a career and personnel development system, and transforming the firm into a data-driven one. In addition, Ren Hua made innovation a hallmark of the company, and developed measures to enable TWPC to become a more sustainable business. He also initiated a formal mechanism to renew the leadership of the company, making sure that his family's role in TWPC did not prevent the company from being professionally run. The case looks into how TWPC transformed to become a professional family business with innovation and a data-driven culture at its core, even as Ren Hua worked to ensure that his family's role in managing the company did not in any way overshadow the work and contributions of the other staff and board directors.

This case covers the period from 2014 to 2020, when DBS embarks on its second strategy under the stewardship of Piyush Gupta. The aim is to become the Best Bank in the World (BBIW) by 2020. The bank reaches its objectives in 2019 and continues to garner more banking accolades. Building on Strategy 1.0 that is implemented from 2010 to 2014 to shape the bank up to international standards, DBS's Strategy 2.0 focuses on "Making Banking Joyful" through three key tenets: (1) digital to the core; (2) being customer obsessed; (3) creating a start-up culture. This case illustrates the requisite leadership and operational capabilities to translate the digital transformation vision into a strategy. It explains how the bank leverages technology as part of its strategy to make banking invisible for its customers, for example, by initially engaging employees through the adoption of hackathons and design thinking. The case also discusses how the bank successfully developed a start-up culture bringing everyone on the same understanding and developing digital tools. Finally, this case highlights the need for the top management team to canvass its Board's endorsement and investment support for a transformation of such size, scale, and duration.

Set in October 2019, this case presents the remarkable growth journey of Nium, a Singapore-headquartered fintech start-up in digital remittance. The founders are on a mission to disrupt the traditional remittance industry ridden with inefficiency and an opaque pricing structure, and are confident that offering low transaction fees, high transparency and quick transfers would give the incumbent players a run for their money. Since starting out in 2015, Nium had successfully secured US$59.5 million in three rounds of equity funding. By 2019, it was the leading digital remittance operator in Southeast Asia. With a presence in eight markets across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions, the value proposition of the fintech start-up was sufficiently compelling to win over investors and customers who had been at the mercy of large financial establishments charging exorbitant fees at unfavourable foreign exchange rates. Looking poised to continue its high growth trajectory, Nium had embarked on a new chapter of market and service expansion. It made inroads into Japan and Indonesia while launching new service platforms that included card-issuing as well as payment collection services for SMEs all over the world. As Nium marks its fifth anniversary of founding, the founders contemplate how the start-up might evolve. Should they pursue an IPO as planned in 2022-23, raise the next round of equity funding, or step into the digital banking arena?

Set in January 2019, the case follows Andreas Sohmen-Pao, Executive Chairman of the BW Group, as he reflects on a fruitful year that passed and looks forward to an exciting and equally challenging year in 2019. BW, a global maritime group operating in the oil tanker, gas carrier and offshore floating infrastructure sectors, was a third-generation family-run business. Established in 2005, BW was the result of a merger of two long-standing shipping firms - Bergesen from Norway and World-Wide Shipping in Hong Kong (the latter was founded by Andreas' grandfather, Sir Yue-Kong Pao). Like many of the preceding years, BW had its share of highs and lows in 2018 too. The highlight was the successful acquisition of Hafnia Tankers by BW Tankers, a BW Group subsidiary. The eventual merger of the two would elevate BW Tankers to become the market leader in product tanker shipping with the largest commercially-managed fleet of more than 150 vessels. However, over the past few years, the tanker market as a whole had sunk into the trough of the shipping cycle. Demand for tanker chartering was unable to keep pace with faster growth in fleet capacity, forcing tanker companies to lower freight rates and leading to depressed earnings. The shipping business was widely perceived to be risky. There were not only short-term market cycles to contend with, new and longer-term challenges surfaced every now and then - such as environmental sustainability concerns (specifically the IMO2020 regulation on curbing ships' sulphur emissions), as well as opportunities and threats from technology (e.g., blockchain, artificial intelligence and cyber-attacks). Diversification had successfully enabled BW to weather challenges in the past, and its current strategy was to actively invest in diversifying and scaling up across multiple shipping segments. Andreas had to chart the way forward for BW in the coming years - how could he best navigate the oncoming headwinds?

Set in March 2015, the case begins when the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), an economic indicator of the average price to ship raw materials, hits an all-time low. Khalid Hashim, Managing Director of Bangkok-based Precious Shipping Public Company Limited (PSL) is now tasked with navigating the company through economic uncertainty. In the past, PSL, has weathered similar volatility characteristic of the cyclical nature of the shipping industry. Though it was able to survive some of the biggest downturns in the market, most notably the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, is it poised to sail through the next downturn?