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Statoil ASA, the Norwegian government-controlled oil and gas company, was widely acknowledged as one of the best performing National Oil Companies (NOCs). Statoil was founded in 1972 after oil was discovered on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). The government of Norway owned 67% of Statoil, and the company was listed on the Oslo and New York Stock exchanges. In 2014, Statoil was faced with some serious challenges. The company's oil and gas production was not growing, and international performance lagged behind Norwegian results. The company had recently announced it was going to back off its 2020 production targets and cut back on capital expenditure.

Teofilo Oil Services was a privately owned Brazilian oil services and production company. Roberto Teofilo, the owner, had started the company in 2000. Originally founded to provide oil field services, it had eventually moved into field operations management, and was now expanding into full field production. The company would now be investing significantly in field licenses and well work (revitalization of an older closed field), and not just providing fee-based services. The Brazilian government was about to ask for tenders on a number of fields, and Teofilo was interested in Field 17A. The current challenge was to decide if and, if so, how much to bid on the closed field.

In June 2013, Elan's shareholders (Elan Corporation, NYSE: ELN) were faced with a difficult choice. Elan's management had four proposals on the table, management's attempt to defend itself against a hostile takeover from Royalty Pharma. Royalty Pharma was a private company, a private equity-owned collector of biotech and pharmaceutical royalties. If shareholders voted in favor of any of the four initiatives, it would likely kill Royalty Pharma's offer-and its guaranteed returns. That would allow Elan to stay independent, and remain under the control of a management team generally considered as underperforming.

In 2010, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. (Geely Holding) acquired Volvo from Ford Motor Company. In early 2011, various questions remained about Volvo's strategy and the long-term integration plan for the acquisition. With the acquisition of Volvo, Geely Holding gained access to a global dealership network, sophisticated automotive technology, and management know-how. A successful integration of Volvo could help Geely Holding improve its own line of cars for global markets and position Geely as a unique brand in the fiercely competitive Chinese automobile industry. Volvo's new management announced that its goal was to more than double global sales to by 2020, with half of the volume coming from sales in China. The company was also intent on expanding Volvo manufacturing in China and developing a new luxury car for the China market. To implement the plan for growth, Volvo would have to address various issues, such as the future of the Volvo brand, the integration between the European and Chinese organizations, and the relationship between the China-based Geely automobile business and the global Volvo Company.

Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) was struggling. The national oil company of Mexico, Pemex held total reign over the Mexican oil and gas industry. The largest company in Latin America, it employed 140,000 people, made up 3% of Mexico's GDP, and provided nearly 40% of the funds for the Mexican government's budget. But production of oil and gas had been dropping for years, and the single field which had made up more than 50% of total production just five years ago, Cantarell, was in rapid decline. Pemex had been a cash cow for the Mexican state, but was notoriously inefficient and potentially corrupt. For the first time since the 1938 revolution which had nationalized the Mexican oil and gas industry, there was serious consideration of undertaking fundamental change at Pemex. 'Change could mean everything from altering the Mexican constitution to taking the company public.

On August 18, 2011, Hewlett Packard, under the leadership of then-CEO Léo Apotheker, announced a friendly acquisition of U.K.-based Autonomy, a market leader in the management of structured and unstructured data for business management solutions, for $11.1 billion. This acquisition attracted tremendous media attention, due to both its size and price. The offer price paid to Autonomy was at £25.5 a share, a 64% premium over its previous day's stock price. Although a number of critics had argued that the price was excessive, many believed the change in HP's strategic direction was appropriate. On November 20, 2012, only one year later, HP made a shocking announcement that it was writing off $8.8 billion of the $11.1 billion purchase price, of which more than $5 billion was due to accounting improprieties and misrepresentations of Autonomy's financial results. How could this deal have gone so wrong? Did HP not carry out proper due diligence and valuation before the offer? Was this acquisition a strategic fit to HP? The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze the corporate strategy of HP, examine HP's financial performance overall and its various business segments, determine how and if Autonomy fits in with HP, and value the acquisition using discounted cash flow (DCF) and multiples analyses.

In April 2012, Delta Airlines was evaluating the potential purchase of the Trainer Refinery in Philadelphia. Delta had been seriously negotiating and pursuing the purchase of Trainer, owned by Phillips 66, for nearly a year. Although Delta's management team believed that owning Trainer would allow Delta to manage its rising fuel costs, particularly in the Northeast Corridor of the United States, the analysts, markets, and press had categorically criticized the potential purchase. Delta needed to decide quickly.

The Tengiz Field in Kazakhstan was discovered by Soviet geologists in 1979 but largely ignored for years as the Soviets focused their oil development efforts elsewhere. When Chevron formed a joint venture with the Kazakh government in 1992, development of Tengiz started. By the spring of 2011, although producing 700,000 barrels of oil per day (bbls/d), Tengiz was yielding only half the oil expected. Chevron was under increasing pressure from its partners, including the Kazakh government, to bring the joint venture to its productive promise.

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Kosmos Energy (Kosmos) was founded in 2003 by a small group of oil and gas industry veterans backed by private equity capital. The company's original plan was to explore for oil along the West African coast. If a commercial discovery was made, Kosmos would sell the asset to an exploration and production (E&P) firm. In 2007, Kosmos and its partners announced a major discovery in deepwater offshore Ghana. Three years later in December 2010, Kosmos was at a crossroads. First oil from the Ghana discovery, now called Jubilee, was delivered in November 2010. Earlier in the year, a sales agreement with ExxonMobil for Kosmos' interests in Ghana was terminated. Kosmos now had to decide on its corporate future and its presence in Ghana. Should the company remain a pure "E" company or expand to E&P, and should it retain its interest in Jubilee's development? Integral to both questions was how the company could either raise capital for, or reap capital from, the Jubilee field

In November 2009, Aidan Quillan and his fellow investors were debating on what to do about their shares in Felix Resources (FLX AU), an Australian coal mining company. Yanzhou Coal Company of China (1171 HK) had been courting Felix for nearly a year, and had made a formal offer on August 13 worth roughly AUD 18 per share, curiously labeled the Scheme, which Felix's board had endorsed. But many stockholders were not really sure the offer was a good one, and the stockholder vote was coming up on December 8. When Yanzhou had first approached Felix in December 2008, the offer had been AUD 20per share. But a lot had changed since then, including the price of coal, the Chinese economy, the value of the Australian dollar, and concerns over Chinese acquisitions of Australian mineral producers. Shareholders, including Aidan Quillan, were now being pressured to accept the Scheme.

In December 2003, the Pacific LNG Consortium feared it was nearing an end to its long-term effort to develop Bolivian natural gas for export. Three companies--Repsol YPF (Spain, 37.5%), BG Group (United Kingdom, 37.5%), and Pan-American Energy, a unit of BP (United Kingdom, 25.0%)--comprised the Pacific LNG Consortium. The Consortium's objective, in short, was to develop Bolivian gas, build a pipeline to the Pacific coast, construct a liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction facility, and export the LNG to California via pipeline from a port in Mexico. The project's economic viability was based on two critical factors: ready access to Bolivian natural gas for at least thirty years, and a long-term sales agreement for the gas. Although Pacific LNG had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the contractual sale of the gas, the MOU was about to run out, and the Bolivian government was still debating the political and economic issues related to the export of its most precious natural resource-natural gas. The Consortium needed to make a last-ditch effort to save the project.

Nine Dragons Paper (NDP) is the largest paperboard manufacturer in China and one of the largest in the world. Led by Mrs. Cheung, CEO, chairman, and founder, it has successfully grown to the top of the industry through a "grow at all costs" strategy. But in the spring of 2009, the company's rising debt levels had combined with declining margins to send the company's share price tumbling. The market was increasingly worried that Mrs. Cheung's strategy was putting the company at risk.

Fluor Corporation has always prided itself on its competence in safety. It was a core value of the company, and Fluor had achieved remarkable safety records on complex projects all over the world. But now, in the spring of 1997, Fluor found itself managing the Western Hemisphere's largest environmental cleanup site, the Hanford reservation in Washington State. The Hanford site was established as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that gave birth to the atomic bomb. Hanford produced nearly two-thirds of U.S. plutonium during the Cold War period. The Hanford site was half the size of Rhode Island, occupying 586 square miles in southeastern Washington State. The cleanup that began in 1988 was expected to take 30 years or more. Improving safety at Hanford was proving to be a significant challenge. As the new site manager at Hanford, Fluor Hanford (FH) inherited lower- and mid-level managers and thousands of unionized employees, many of whom were second- or third-generation Hanford employees. These employees had seen many contractors come and go over the previous years. Some of the managers who had worked with the previous contractor saw Fluor's emphasis on safety as getting in the way of operations. Union/management relations were fractious. Hanford's culture was described as "production driven-management told everyone what to do, and, if you didn't do it, there were consequences." Worker involvement in designing and implementing safety programs was negligible. FH also was having trouble satisfying its client, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Fluor Corporation has always prided itself on its competence in safety. It was a core value of the company, and Fluor had achieved remarkable safety records on complex projects all over the world. But now, in the spring of 1997, Fluor found itself managing the Western Hemisphere's largest environmental cleanup site, the Hanford reservation in Washington State. The Hanford site was established as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that gave birth to the atomic bomb. Hanford produced nearly two-thirds of U.S. plutonium during the Cold War period. The Hanford site was half the size of Rhode Island, occupying 586 square miles in southeastern Washington State. The cleanup that began in 1988 was expected to take 30 years or more. Improving safety at Hanford was proving to be a significant challenge. As the new site manager at Hanford, Fluor Hanford (FH) inherited lower- and mid-level managers and thousands of unionized employees, many of whom were second- or third-generation Hanford employees. These employees had seen many contractors come and go over the previous years. Some of the managers who had worked with the previous contractor saw Fluor's emphasis on safety as getting in the way of operations. Union/management relations were fractious. Hanford's culture was described as "production driven-management told everyone what to do, and, if you didn't do it, there were consequences." Worker involvement in designing and implementing safety programs was negligible. FH also was having trouble satisfying its client, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

This case describes the complexity of PepsiCo's competitive position in the Mexican soft drink market in late 1996. Following PepsiCo's anchor bottler in Mexico, Gemex, the case details the strategies employed by PepsiCo's senior management, beginning in 1993, to expand its market share versus its traditional "red nemesis," Coca-Cola. The various dimensions of PepsiCo's strategy-marketing, management, financial, strategic-are all seen to have deteriorated in the aftermath of the unexpected fall in the Mexican peso in December 1994. Focusing on the financial implications of the peso devaluation, the case then describes PepsiCo's response, which only seemed to increase the financial burdens imposed on the faltering Pepsi market share.

Just when John Penman thought Nodal Logistics Corporation (NLC or "Nodal") was ready to move into Brazil, a new hurdle was thrown in his path. Only a few days ago-on December 11, 2007-he had finally obtained approval from the U.S.-based company's executive board to invest $45 million in an 800,000 square foot industrial property project in São Paulo, Brazil. But that was before yesterday's phone call from the legal department. Nodal's legal staff had received confirmation from their São Paulo-based associate that under Brazilian law, commercial real estate contracts must be denominated in Brazilian reais. One of Nodal's basic operating practices which had been so important to its international success had been to write all industrial real estate agreements in U.S. dollars. This posed a serious problem, as most industrial leases ranged from as short as five years to more than 12, and that was a very long time to be exposed to the Brazilian currency. John now had to delve into the multitude of strategies and derivatives that might allow the company to manage the currency risk; otherwise, the deal was dead.

When Robert A. "Bob" Eckert was named Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mattel Toys in May 2000, he found a company which many considered lost. Its former CEO, Jill Barad, who had brought Barbie back from the toy-dead in the 1990s and CEO since 1997, had been forced out months before as the company's earnings had plummeted. The company was now losing roughly $1 million per day, and Barbie, the cornerstone of the company's sales and profits for a decade, was aging. Mattel's share price had plummeted from $46 per share in 1998 to a current low of $10. Bob Eckert and his team had moved quickly to slash operating costs, divest massive money losers, refocus on core products and brands, all in the hope of reviving profitability. The financial and operational measures taken had been rapid and, in some cases, brutal. The market had been patient with Bob Eckert, but now, in the summer of 2004, four years after his entrance, it was time to review accomplishments and renew and revise expectations. The toy industry was infamously short-cycled, and many worried that Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fischer Price, and American Girl would no longer provide the growth Mattel needed. The business mantra of profitable growth was very real to Bob Eckert and Mattel.

The initial public offering (IPO) of Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil giant, was scheduled for mid-July 2006, in both London and Moscow. It was expected to be one of the largest IPOs in history. However, as of July 1, the Russian government, Rosneft's management, and its financial advisors had yet to decide on the IPO price. Expert valuations varied substantially, ranging between $64 billion and $120 billion. Peter O'Brien, the new CFO of Rosneft (he had been appointed only in April), and his investment advisors had little more than a week to decide the structure and pricing of the Rosneft IPO.

Deck is a U.S.-based multinational supplier to the automotive industry. It is a part of a joint venture in Romania, which, in October 2006, needs to be expanded to fulfill the growing needs of Renault-Dacia and its highly successful new world car, the Logan. But the question of the joint venture's expansion has revealed that the JV does not meet many of Deck's global manufacturing and business practice criteria. It is now being aggressively pushed by the customer to expand its investment in a small, local market, which may not yield sufficient financial results to justify the investment.