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The Morales couple, Carlos and María, and Andrés Córdoba, shareholders of the twenty-year old Colombian mining company Carbostar, wanted to step down from the day-to-day management of the company in March 2018. To do so, they considered three options: selling the entire Company to Carbones de Panamá; partnering with Carbones Julius, which was willing to buy 45% of the shares as long as the founders participated in an aggressive expansion plan by increasing debt; or selling 60% of the shares to Maklan, a coal producer and supplier of heavy machinery in the industry, which could accept a generous dividend policy given its financial muscle. As the majority shareholder (with 75% of the shares), Carlos Morales was not convinced about allowing third parties to manage the company he had founded. He secretly longed for one of his children to take over the company in the future. His wife María (Andrés' sister) held 12.5% of the shares. Her interests lay in receiving an income from the business and she had no preconceived ideas on whether it was convenient to open up to third parties. Andrés Córdoba held the remai ning 12.5% of the shares. He was interested in creating a family office with the resources from the total or partial sale of Carbostar. As the financial expert of the group, he was responsible for advising his partners on their course of action. Andrés' challenge, which will be the task for students, is to find the option that best balances the disparate interests of his partners.

Spreadsheet supplement for "Carbostar: To sell or not to sell? That is the question".

In March 2013, Alberto Silva, president of the newly appointed Board of Directors of Fabricato, one of Colombia's oldest textile companies, met with representatives of the main shareholder groups in order to gauge their willingness to approve profound changes within the corporation and even inject new money, if necessary. The company was suffering from a major crisis caused by a stock market bubble generated around its share price, which resulted in the suspension of its stock market listing, the disqualification of a major group of shareholders, and the bankruptcy of Interbolsa, the brokerage company that financed the bubble. With great effort, Silva was successful in obtaining, from the representatives of the main groups of shareholders, the commitment that they would vote in the Board of Directors in favor of hiring a new Executive President for the company, only if he were able to identify the path to follow: liquidate the company, restructure it with or without an injection of new money, or split it in two, one to keep the manufacturing assets and the other to develop the real estate business. The student's role is to assume Silva's task and define the course of action to follow, making use of specific financial information about the company, an Excel simulation sheet of its share price and indicators, its history, the challenges of the industry, and the environment in Colombia for March 2013.

Ernesto Blanco, a leading Venezuelan businessman in the financial sector, was proposing to create a foundation with the aim of promoting the development of the stock market in his country. He wanted this initiative to be aligned with the strategic vision of his business group, as much as possible. However, he did not rule out sponsoring something not directly linked to the line of interest of his organization, if it had an impact on the status quo of the national stock market. Given the wide spectrum of issues that would fit into such an initiative, he decided to focus his efforts by developing a strategic planning exercise run by his old friend Ramón Piñango from the Business Academic Training Center (CAAE). For a day, a group of important opinion-makers from the academic and business worlds helped to think about the challenges of this proposal. These discussions resulted in the design of "four strategic topics" on which the project should focus: ≈ Development of the population's technical and financial capacities ≈ Ability of Venezuelan companies to operate in stock markets ≈ Capacity of the regulatory environment to boost competition ≈ Stimulation of the demand for securities Although Ernesto Blanco was convinced that the strategic planning exercise, run by Piñango, had been a success, he still felt that he had not resolved his greatest concern: where to position his foundation in the thematic area that would have the greatest impact on society, while aligning it with the long-term development interests of his corporate group.

In the midst of the macroeconomic crisis in Venezuela, Luis Marcano − business analyst with Productos La Valentina (PLV, for its acronym in Spanish) Group − had been assigned the valuation of the most emblematic enterprise in the group, Helados La Valentina (Ice-Creams La Valentina, HLV for its acronym in Spanish) in order to assess the convenience of the divestiture or retention of the business. PLV Group analyzed what changes they needed to make to their business portfolio in order to reduce political risk exposure related to its investments in Venezuela. In this context, Helados La Valentina − business around which the major PLV Corporation had been built − was a possible choice for divestiture. Marcano was to present the Investment Committee with a recommendation that would define the future of the business within the group. Should the group sell HLV or not? The answer to this question called for the valuation of the business in no time, based on the information available at that time. In order to embark on this endeavor, Marcano had to choose the valuation method that could better adjust to the existing constraints (a week's time margin) and − in turn − create a response that might be sufficiently robust to satisfy the inquisitive committee.