Increasingly in the 2010s, corporations turned to divestitures and spinoffs to streamline their operations. Over the course of one week in November 2021, conglomerates General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and Toshiba announced plans for separation. The news reflected the broader shift toward divestitures as a means to focus on core competencies and achieve growth. By that time, more than three-quarters of companies (78%) believed that they should have divested assets sooner, as opposed to just 41% of companies in 2016. Further, 76% of companies anticipated that the Covid-19 pandemic would increase divestment plan momentum. This case explores the rationales for and against spinoffs, and provides recent examples of companies that followed their spinoffs with consolidations (and vice versa).

Mobile streaming app Quibi was ready to take the entertainment world by storm at its April 2020 launch. Backed by $1.75 billion, influential investors from Hollywood to Wall Street eagerly anticipated early success for this brainchild of Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairperson of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures. Quibi's value proposition was to fill a 'white space' through seven to ten minute dramas, on a platform that was technologically sophisticated for users and extremely copyright friendly for content creators. Six months later, a disappointing lack of demand cornered Quibi into closing shop. Was it poor timing, or inherent business model viability? This case prompts discussion on the complete strategy landscape, from defining the opportunity set and value potential to understanding the ultimate outcome.

This case follows Jason Wright and Umang Kajaria at Apax Partners as they consider an investment in Duck Creek Technologies, a technology provider for property & casualty insurance companies. The deal required a complex carve-out from Accenture, Duck Creek's parent organization, and several operational improvements to rejuvenate the company. The case provides the opportunity to evaluate the deal's investment thesis, structure, and risks, along with calculating Duck Creek's valuation.

This case follows Prakash Melwani (HBS MBA '86), CIO of Blackstone's Private Equity Group, and his teams' investment in the footwear company Crocs. Instead of a traditional secondary offering, Crocs opted for a unique deal structure by taking Blackstone's cash in a private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal. During the Blackstone investment, Melwani and his team drastically reworked Crocs' strategy. The case offers insight into the operational initiatives undertaken to revitalize the Crocs brand.

This case follows Summit Partners, a leading growth equity firm, as it evaluates an investment opportunity in IVC, a veterinary care group in the U.K. market. The case allows students to articulate and evaluate the investment thesis of this transaction. Additionally, it provides insight into the sourcing and due diligence process in the modern growth equity space, as well as details of the financial structure of the investment. In particular, the case provides students with an opportunity to recreate the valuation model, and understand the economics of the preferred equity. The case can be used as a platform to reflect on the value add of growth equity investors and what constitutes as a "propriety" investment in the mature growth equity industry.

This case follows Nikos Stathopoulos, Managing Partner of BC Partners, as he and his team evaluate the potential sale of one of BC Partners' portfolio companies, Acuris. Acuris was a global financial intelligence, news, and data company that had been acquired by BC Partners only three years prior. During that time, Stathopoulos and his team had been able to implement a variety of operational improvements and acquisitions which resulted in BC Partners receiving numerous offers for both full and partial sales of the company, at attractive multiples. But the BC Partners team felt there was still more gain to be realized from their value-add initiatives, and there were also several initiatives they had identified but not yet implemented. Stathopoulos had to decide: should they pursue a full sale, partial sale, or no sale at all?

This case follows a fictional managing partner of a private equity firm, as she contemplates whether to utilize subscription lines of credit in her firm's funds. Subscription lines are revolving lines of credit secured by commitments from a fund's investors. Private equity firms are increasingly using these lines to boost metrics and profits on their funds, but the benefits to investors are debatable. Because of this, the firm in the case had previously avoided using such lines. However, faced with the growing popularity of the practice in the industry and an increasingly competitive return environment, it is forced to reevaluate this position.

In 2018, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice celebrated its 40th anniversary and its 20th year under the leadership of CEO Don Gogel. In those decades, CD&R showed solid portfolio performance and generated strong returns for its investors - accomplishments attributed to its unique balance between operations and finance professionals. The firm made sure that, for every deal, it had both the finance and operations expertise to grow revenues, streamline operations, and truly turnaround distressed companies. But as CD&R entered into its fifth decade and its largest fund to date (nearly $10 billion AUM), competition, AUMs, industry "dry powder," and buyout valuations were all on the rise. Within CD&R, rapidly-evolving technologies, talent retention, and the prospect of Gogel's retirement presented additional sources of pressure. Gogel and his team had to consider whether CD&R could maintain its unique identity and continue to add value as it had in the past in the face of such circumstances.