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Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291020

A U.S. trucking company is considering using debt for the first time to acquire another company. The directors of the company are divided in their opinion of the likely impact of leverage on Continental Carriers' performance. Their differences must be reconciled and a decision reached about whether to issue new debt or equity to fund the acquisition. Students are introduced to the impact of leverage on performance variables such as profits, growth, earnings per share, and stock price. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Having acquired a 26% stake in Koito Manufacturing, a Japanese automotive parts supplier in the Toyota Group, T. Boone Pickens seeks a seat on Koito's board of directors. Koito's management resists, claiming Pickens is an unhelpful greenmailer, not a true long-term investor. The struggle between the two provides students with a chance to compare and contrast American and Japanese corporate governance practices. Debate centers on whether the Japanese system fosters efficiency or merely market power that reduces economic welfare.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291027.

A hypothetical case in which an assistant treasurer of a supranational bank is asked to determine in which currencies it has been cheaper ex post to borrow. An integral part of the case is a Lotus 1-2-3 worksheet containing monthly data on yen and dollar interest rates, exchange rates, and inflation rates from January 1976 to October 1985. The worksheet with accompanying questions prompts students to study the various parity relationships between the yen and the dollar numerically, graphically, or statistically. Students are challenged to draw inferences concerning the circumstances under which a treasurer should expect to prefer borrowing in one currency rather than others. Requires Case Software diskette (9-289-534).

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 289001.

Concerns the first leveraged buyout to occur in Japan. Analytic tasks include a valuation of the company and an assessment of its debt capacity. Also provides opportunities to discuss agency costs associated with alternative capital and equity ownership structures, differences between U.S. and Japanese corporate finance practices, and the potential role of leveraged buyouts in the restructuring of Japanese manufacturing.

An Tai Bao is the world's largest open-pit coal mine and is located in China's Shanxi province. After eight years of planning and negotiating, Occidental Petroleum, the foreign partner in the deal, is about to sign an ownership and financing agreement for $475 million that involves $20 million of its own equity and limited recourse. The deal contains a number of unusual features including the tying of recourse to nonconcurrent, partial competition tests, and a covenant forcing sponsors to buy back the entire project from the joint venture owning it in the event of postcompletion default. Students are required to determine if the terms of the deal are attractive to each of the parties involved.

The treasurer of Gaz de France is an aggressive, proactive manager of his company's liability structure, running one of the largest swap books of any non-financial corporation in the world. Currency futures, interbank forwards, and currency options are also frequently used to control the company's multi-currency liability structure. This case prompts students to explore the reasons and ramifications of such aggressive liability management, with particular attention being paid to the administrative challenges created by such a large swap position. An important decision has to be made regarding the management of the swap book in the face of the depreciating dollar, the decline of the franc against the German mark, and a possible realignment of the European Currency Unit. This is a comprehensive case involving swaps, debt policy, and foreign exchange exposure that is best taught after students have been introduced to these topics.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 288030.

Provides a simple framework for analyzing expected exchange rate movements. Basic parity and equilibrium conditions are presented including purchasing power parity, forward parity, interest rate parity, the domestic Fisher effect, and the international Fisher effect (Fisher open). Empirical evidence about these conditions are discussed. References are provided.

Describes the transaction and translation exposures that companies doing business internationally face when foreign exchange rates change. Also discusses how to measure and cover both types of exposure. Covering techniques are demonstrated using examples of forward cover, money market hedges, and options market hedges. Other covering devices, such as swaps and leads and lags, are also presented. Explains how these exposures relate to each other and what can be done to minimize overall foreign exchange risk.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 288017

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 287033.

Discusses the background of the foreign exchange market. This includes information about the participants and how the market operates. The problem set verses students in the arithmetic in the many common foreign exchange problems such as calculating forward premium and discounts, determining hedge ratios, covered interest arbitrage, etc.

Walt Disney is considering hedging future yen inflows from Disney Tokyo. It is evaluating techniques using FX Forwards, swaps, and Yen term borrowings. Goldman Sachs presents a rather unusual but potentially attractive solution: Disney could issue ECU Eurobonds and swap into a Yen liability. The case explains how this alternative would work and suggests to the students ways to evaluate the hedging choices.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 287057

Reynolds must source a substantial portion of the financing of its Nabisco acquisition in offshore bond markets. Morgan Guaranty has proposed a yen/dollar dual currency Eurobond that could be hedged into dollars. This structure is compared to Eurodollar Bonds, Euroyen Bonds, and Euroyen Bonds swapped or hedged into dollars.

This small but rapidly growing Danish biochemical company must choose among several financing opportunities that include a convertible Eurobond, a rights offering in Denmark and an issue of new common shares in the United States. The case involves a broad range of issues concerning the ability of a multinational company to lower its cost of capital by tapping different capital markets worldwide.

An appropriations committee's job is often complicated by the conflict between managers who favor hard quantitative techniques and those who prefer a softer qualitative analysis when evaluating investment opportunities. Reliance on quantitative analysis--usually involving discounted cash flow--can lead an organization to invest in projects that have little risk but that are also unexciting to strategists. The answer does not lie in favoring either side over the other. Instead, executives need to adopt a new way of thinking that gives a hard analytic edge to the soft side of the argument. They need to think of investment opportunities as future growth options for the company.