個案總覽

The ongoing U.S.-China trade war had lifted South American soybean prices to 20% higher than the CBOT price. Domestically, a severe drought had undermined Argentina's 2018 soybean production, leaving Argentine soy crushing plants extremely undersupplied. Pressed by the country's economic emergency, Argentina´s President Macri had imposed new tariffs on farming exports. With these and other factors in mind, Enrique and Alejandro Duhau had to decide what to plant the following year and whether to lease additional land for agriculture. Should they prioritize the market opportunity for soybeans over technical factors such as crop rotation? What risks would increasing the amount of leased land entail? Would it prove convenient to pay a higher-than-usual price to secure more leases? Was their hedging strategy appropriate or should it be revised based on the current context?

In 2016 unforeseen Oil and Gas industry-wide demand slump drove ProdEng's average service rates down by more than 37%, with EBITDA margins falling from 50% to 24% in the second half of 2016. Although the Partners remained optimistic about ProdEng's long-term fundamentals and management team, the short-term challenges required that they act rapidly. However, they had divergent views on the path forward. Should they stay the course and focus on their core competencies or should they rethinking their approach to sales and driving profitability via spot contracts in a highly uncertain time?

Colombia conceived its 4G (Fourth Generation) Road Program to try to attract $17 billion from the private sector for investment in toll roads. The nation had also created the National Infrastructure Agency of Colombia (ANI) to oversee multiple investments, and the National Development Fund (FDN) as a credit enhancement vehicle. By 2017, Colombia had largely recovered from the "bad times" and was viewed as one of Andean Nations' success stories. Colombia was rapidly expanding its seaports, airports, power grid, and, particularly, its road network to link multiple metropolitan and rural areas across its mountain-riddled territory. Private-public partnerships were used since the federal budget did not have enough cash flow or credit to fund a vast road building program. The 4G Program featured improvements as compared to earlier-generation programs, making it more attractive to private investors. These included newly crafted contracts, shared risks between private and public parties, and liquidity lines of credit provided by FDN.

Molino Cañuelas was a vertically integrated food company with a management system that allowed it to innovate and grow systematically. With sales of $2 billion in 2016, the firm not only produced flour, vegetable oil and packaged food products; it also owned a port terminal, a packaging plant and an Agribusiness Services Division to support over 8,000 agricultural producers. CEO and Chairman Aldo Navilli, who had run the company since 1986 and had developed its management system, wanted to ensure that as the company grew and expanded, it would maintain its culture and working style. The company was exporting to 32 countries and had manufacturing plants in Brazil and Uruguay. As it continued its international expansion, should it follow the same vertical integration strategy in other countries or should it develop its retail business through partnerships or alliances?

In August 2017, Cumplo's Founder Shea and CEO Kirberg meet to discuss growth and strategy issues faced by this Chilean fintech startup. What sales and marketing strategy will best foster the compny's growth? Are changes needed in the product lineup? How and when should Cumplo begin to expand beyond Chile, to other countries in Latin America? The company raised $1.4 million in its first three years, mainly from individual investors, and then issued new shares for $3 million in 2015. By June 2017, Cumplo was debt-free, had achieved break-even, and had raised an additional $2.3 million.