This case examines the key issues facing MetLife, a major company in life and annuity (L&A) and-to a lesser extent-property and casualty (P&C) insurance. The case provides an opportunity to analyze the business models of insurance companies, the main risks they face, and the broad investment strategies they pursue. The case also discusses how technology (including insurtech), regulation, and risk affect MetLife and insurance companies in general, and describes MetLife's history and recent developments. Finally, the case presents an opportunity for a simple valuation of an insurance company using multiples.
The US-China trade war in 2019 led to major shifts in global trade and supply chains, highlighting the recent trend in deglobalization. This case discusses the patterns of international trade and capital flows across the two countries, determinants of trade imbalances, and the role of national savings, policies, institutions, and exchange rates. The material allows for an examination of several factors, including the broader context of tech competition between China and the United States. The case raises a series of questions around the uncertainty the trade war created, the impact of tariffs on both economies, and diverging views from the two sides on who is winning. The case has been successfully taught in second-year MBA classes and executive training programs on global economies and markets.
This public-sourced case describes the latest restructuring efforts by Deutsche Bank (DB) and gives a short history of prior restructuring efforts from the decade before. In July 2019, Christian Sewing, the new CEO of DB, announced a series of measures that included, among others, the elimination of global equity trading, the layoff of 18,000 employees, the creation of a "bad bank" to transfer noncore assets, and the suspension of dividends until 2022. The case describes key decisions a bank CEO makes when a bank needs to change course to return to profitability and growth. The case offers an opportunity to debate these key decisions, as well as discuss some of the prior ones during earlier restructuring efforts, and put the students in the CEO's shoes: What would you do and why? The case also describes key banking performance metrics (e.g., ROE, ROA) and other critical variables such as those reflecting capital health (Tier 1 ratio), as well as gives an overview of the bank business model and factors impacting bank profitability and value.
This case, which has been taught successfully in a Darden online class, allows for an introductory application of the Tableau analytics platform. In 2012, Carvana Co., an e-commerce platform for buying used cars, hosted a competition called "Don't Get Kicked!" wherein 570 teams competed to predict if a car purchased at auction was a "kick" (i.e., a bad buy)-a vehicle with a major defect. To compete, teams downloaded Carvana's data from Kaggle's website. At the time of the competition, data science was a burgeoning field, and industry watchers wondered if machine learning could help a company such as Carvana develop a competitive advantage. This case analyzes the US used-car market, Carvana's history and Kaggle's role in its development, and the viability of data science-particularly visual analytics-in guiding business and consumer decisions.
This case covers the initial public offering (IPO) of the Siemens AG subsidiary Healthineers. The case offers the opportunity to discuss IPOs and to value the company. In contrast to "Healthineers: A Strategic IPO" (UV7866), which provides some base case valuation analysis, this version of the case is designed to be used when a primary teaching objective is to have students perform more of the analysis. The material is set in 2018, when CEO Joe Kaeser and the management board of Siemens planned an IPO of its Healthineers subsidiary to support the company's continued success and spur entrepreneurial independence. The IPO would position Healthineers to compete successfully in the global health care market, which was quite different from other sectors in which Siemens, a global technology conglomerate, operated. While Siemens would maintain a substantial equity interest, Healthineers would become a separate public company with increased flexibility and autonomy. In the immediate term, the management team was especially interested in what value financial markets would place on Healthineers once it was a public company.
This case covers the initial public offering (IPO) of the Siemens subsidiary Healthineers. The March 2018 offering of the health care technology firm was heavily anticipated on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and was Germany's largest IPO in more than 20 years. Healthineers was one of Siemens' most successful businesses, and its management board had a keen interest in its long-term success and in the valuation that financial markets would place on the company. The case allows students to learn about the IPO process, understand Siemens' strategic rationale, and estimate the value of Healthineers.
This case uses France's labor market and regulation reforms in 2018 to illustrate how deregulation and labor market reforms can affect an economy's potential GDP. The case discusses President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to boost economic growth through economic liberalization, focusing on small- and medium-sized enterprises. The material allows for an examination of the effects of regulation on labor policy. If implemented, would the reforms boost broadly based growth? Would lowering taxes and regulation continue to boost France's economy, or would it unnecessarily put France's social safety net at risk?