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As Berkshire Hathaway had reported in its 2018, first quarter, 10-Q, it was "engage[d] in a number of diverse business activities." Maria knew that Berkshire Hathaway bought the stock of numerous other companies. She assumed that the company's holdings in the common stock of other companies represented various ownership percentages, and she wanted to explore that possibility more extensively.

Supplement to case UV7653

The new business development manager for Evergreen Executive Education has been asked by the firm's CEO to develop a list of as many revenue growth ideas as he could over the next week. The COE saw this task as critical for the new services initiative that he had been hired to lead. The list would be an inventory of possibilities for ongoing consideration as well as a catalyst for other professionals in the firm to generate additional ideas. The CEO had described the task for him was to keep his primary business-development mission in mind, and to think big and out of the box.

Among only a handful of early adopters of a new revenue recognition mandate for calendar year 2017 annual reports, beginning of the year retained earnings for Ford Motor Company (Ford) was adjusted $36 million higher while General Dynamic's was adjusted down by $301 million, both a result of their early adoption of the new revenue recognition guidelines. A new revenue recognition mandate, she noted three important points.

This case challenges students to review a series of corporate financial metrics and to match each of them with an industry in a list of 13 industries.

After Amazon.com announced it would acquire Whole Foods, shares of supermarkets in the United States were hit hard; the same was true for grocers in Europe, as investors there worried about the possibility of Amazon moving beyond US borders in the grocery space. Because little had been said regarding the motivation behind the acquisition, the CEO of a large organic-foods supermarket group in Europe decided that the potential impact of this acquisition might warrant some reflection. He wanted to start by looking at the implications of the acquisition on Amazon's consolidated financial statements.

The COO for Sonvilier Pen, an elite manufacturer of high-quality ballpoint and fountain pens, had gotten a proposal to outsource two pen components to Li Manufacturing, a specialist in the molding and production of intricate metals, located in southeastern China. The proposal was intriguing, but there were a number of factors for the COO to consider before making a decision.

The president of the Belgian consumer goods subsidiary of a large American conglomerate thought he had inherited a loyal, lean, efficient, and capable management team to help him accelerate the growth and profitability of the decades-old, moderately successful subsidiary. Yet after six months in his current position, not much had improved. Financial performance had not regressed-just not expanded or accelerated.

Supplement to case UV7401. The president of the Belgian consumer goods subsidiary had made a conscious effort to engage his direct reports in ways that he felt aligned with their personalities. He had noticed some modest changes in the weekly management team meetings-all team members had begun taking advantage of opportunities to contribute to the deliberations, posing questions, and raising some minor concerns. Now a replacement must be picked to replace the senior marketing executive who had retired.

A fellow named J. T. Funk has reviewed the financial statements of two retail companies and now adds a third company's financial statements to review for strength or portended weakness, and if so, to find what are the indicators of either.

A fellow named J. T. Funk is fascinated with the fact that there were often clear winners and clear losers in the competitive retail arena, and it did not seem to matter whether a retailer was big or small, old or new because any retailer could fail. Funk wonders if there would be any clues in the retailer financial statements he has in his possession that pointed to strength or portended weakness, and if so, what were the indicators of either?

Supplement to case UV7211. In the B case, Susan Shaw has finished her review of the Facebook/WhatsApp deal and recalls hearing about AT&T's acquisition of DIRECTV in July 2015. From a financial-statement-impact point of view, she wonders what the similarities and differences were between the Facebook/WhatsApp acquisition and the AT&T/DIRECTV deal.

One of Susan Shaw's interests is investing in the stock market. She has copied some pages of Facebook Inc.'s 2015, 2014, and 2013 financial statements, and the company sure seemed like an investment winner. But as she peruses these financial statements, she notices that in the 2014 financial statements there are some huge differences from the 2013 statement for a number of line items, such as Total Assets, Goodwill, Additional Paid in Capital, Revenue, Net Income, and Net Cash Used in Investing Activities. The reported dollar amounts for many of these items listed on the 2014 balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows, had more than doubled and she wonders if traditional financial statements and reporting conventions were robust and effective in communicating the intricacies and details of deals such as Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and were all Facebook's assets and enterprise value reflected inits balance sheets.

A writer of computer code, who bought and sold tech company stocks, is asked by one of his friends, who was contemplating buying some Microsoft stock, to help him understand the Microsoft/Nokia deal.

This case challenges students to review a series of corporate financial metrics and to match them to one of the 13 labeled and listed industries. It is suitable for MBA and undergraduate students ready to expand their basic understanding of financial metrics.

With the encouragement of its overseas parent company, Cochran Consumer Products Inc. (CCPI), the U.S.-based executive team at S. J. Lawson, Inc. (SJLI), was nearly ready to announce the new financial performance measurement focus and economic profit (EP) for the company's product category managers. Currently, the SJLI executive team was finalizing plans for its initial announcement to the subsidiary's five product category managers. The team had received some general guidance from headquarters but it had also been told that because it knew the category managers best, it should develop its own local strategy for introducing the initiative.

Junior and senior faculty members collaborate on crafting a classroom covenant.

Ron Hopkins had just finished his first year as founder, president, head mechanic, chief cook, and lead tour guide for the Colorado & Utah Canyon Tours Company (CUCTC). The first year had been a good one, and Hopkins thought he probably had made a small profit-after all, he had ended the year with a positive balance in the CUCTC checking account. Among the many roles and tasks he performed at CUCTC, however, accountant/bookkeeper was not one of them. For that task, he calls on his former college roommate, Chris Norris to prepare the financial statements needed for a $300,000 loan application he intended to make at Lofton National Bank next month. Norris plans to organize the CUCTC financial notes and records Hopkins has sent him.

This case is used at the Darden School of Business in the inventory module of the "Financial Reporting" course elective, but it would also work well at the advanced undergraduate level. Through five phases, students first become familiar with core terminology and concepts before examining various situations-from what to make of an annual report footnote disclosure and balancing the pros and cons of using LIFO versus FIFO cost flow assumption to examining misreported inventory and inventory write-downs.

This case challenges students to review a series of corporate financial metrics and to match them to one of the thirteen labeled and listed industries. It is suitable for MBA and undergraduate students ready to expand their basic understanding of financial metrics.