個案總覽

In November 2002, a California state court required the California Public Employees' Retirement Systems (CalPERS) to publicly report its returns on private-equity investments. This case examines the controversy surrounding the disclosure of private-equity returns mandated by this court decision. It includes discussions of the reaction of general and limited partners and the issues surrounding the sizable amounts of pension money invested in alternative investments. The CalPERS decision dovetailed with efforts by the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) and the British and European Venture Capital Associations to reach greater agreement on disclosure standards in reporting the results of private-equity investments. The case details one set of standards, AIMR's Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), which would become effective January 1, 2005. Students are asked to calculate the proposed metrics for a typical fund and assess their usefulness to a prospective investor. More broadly, the case addresses the type of information necessary to properly benchmark private-equity returns and the consequences of this type of disclosure to the industry.

In November 2002, a California state court required the California Public Employees' Retirement Systems (CalPERS) to publicly report its returns on private-equity investments. This case examines the controversy surrounding the disclosure of private-equity returns mandated by this court decision. It includes discussions of the reaction of general and limited partners and the issues surrounding the sizable amounts of pension money invested in alternative investments. The CalPERS decision dovetailed with efforts by the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) and the British and European Venture Capital Associations to reach greater agreement on disclosure standards in reporting the results of private-equity investments. The case details one set of standards, AIMR's Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), which would become effective January 1, 2005. Students are asked to calculate the proposed metrics for a typical fund and assess their usefulness to a prospective investor. More broadly, the case addresses the type of information necessary to properly benchmark private-equity returns and the consequences of this type of disclosure to the industry.

This case is designed for an MBA course in management planning and control systems, an MBA course on mergers and acquisitions, an MBA course on strategy implementation, or any class on executive compensation systems. It gives students exposure to executive compensation plans, the design of performance measurement and incentive compensation systems to facilitate the implementation of strategy, and issues that arise in post-merger integration. Significant differences in executive compensation for British Petroleum and Amoco Corporation prior to the merger between the two companies pose interesting challenges to successfully integrating the two executive teams after the merger. Students are asked to evaluate the post-merger executive compensation plan for BP Amoco in light of company's post-merger strategy, differences in the pre-merger executive compensation plans, and issues surrounding post-merger integration in their preparation and class discussion.