Happiness Capital is a global venture capital firm within the hundred-year-old Lee Kum Kee Group with a mission to bring happiness to the community and the world through venture investments. As the founding Lee family progressed into the fifth generation, it wanted to diversify into a business that would also benefit the society, and impact investing emerged as an answer as it was a cause that resonated across different generations of the family. Happiness Capital undertook the pioneering initiative to co-create the "Happiness Return Framework" together with industry experts, addressing the issue of impact measurements often encountered in impact investing. The case examines how Happiness Capital defines and measures happiness with its proprietary "Happiness Return Framework," as well as examining its investment strategies, process, performance, risk management, organization and governance.
The case addresses the birth of Tencent Music Entertainment Group, China's music streaming leader. The case features two protagonists. One of them is Guomin Xie, a legally-trained senior executive at Sina.com, an early and highly influential Chinese internet company, employed in the period approximately from the beginning of that company's existence in the late 1990s until 2012. It was a highly challenging period for China's legitimate music market resulting in pervasive piracy. Among Guomin Xie's corporate responsibilities at Sina.com was acting as the head of Sina Music, a fledgling music streaming platform, which in turn enabled him to gain an extraordinary familiarity with China's struggling music market. Aided by his legal education and experience with China's imperfect copyright enforcement, he became consumed with a vision to create a major new company which would help kill the piracy cancer. The business model of the new company would combine streaming of legitimate music with exclusive ownership or rental of music copyrights. As the top management of Sina.com was not interested in pursuing Xie's vision, which would require major investments, he quit his job in 2012 and turned to entrepreneurship by founding China Music Corporation ("CMC"). He was faced immediately with three main challenges in his entrepreneurial career - (1) to enter into exclusive copyright agreements with music labels; (2) acquire two existing music streaming platforms; and (3) pursue fundraising. By September of the following year, he made good progress on the first two objectives, but still needed to close in on fundraising in order to complete challenge.
Wanda Cultural was one of the four pillars of the Dalian Wanda Group ("Wanda Group"), which had been China's giant of commercial properties. From 2005 to 2018, Wanda Cultural had gone through a number of strategic transformations and developed four major business sectors: films, sports, travel innovation, as well as children's entertainment & education. Through domestic and cross-border acquisitions and diversifications, Wanda Cultural had emerged from a domestic Chinese family-owned enterprise to become a world-class multinational corporation ("MNC"). As a pioneer in film industry investment in China, Wanda Cultural had succeeded in building a vertically integrated business model that spanned across different developed countries and secured leading market position in the world. When Wanda Cultural entered into other foreign developed markets and diversified into different industry sectors, both opportunities and threats for competing in the global environment exemplified. This case explores opportunities facing firms as they seek to develop and exploit core competencies by diversifying into global markets. In addition, it explores different problems, complexities and threats that might affect a MNC's international strategy and rationale for retrenchment. The case also explores business innovation strategies and its impact on global competitiveness and growth.
Edwin Lee, is a fourth generation member of the Lee family. He owns and runs Sun Hing Group, and is a board member of the Simon KY Lee Foundation. The Foundation was established in 1985 and managed by Edwin's grandfather until his passing in 2010. Largely inspired by the family's experience with other charitable organizations, it underwent a major reorganization to accommodate a business model where social innovation is central to the Foundation's charitable activities, and where the entire multi-generational family volunteers to participate in the decision-making process. As next in line to be the senior decision maker, Edwin's challenge is to reconcile his professional ambitions of making a large-scale social impact as a philanthropist with his family's wish for him to become the guardian of the family's business. The question is, to what extent Edwin should be involved simultaneously with the family business operations and The Simon KY Lee Foundation's charitable activities in achieving his personal and family's objectives and in ensuring the Foundation's future development?
Elizabeth Mok was the second born and the only daughter in the fourth generation of the Lee family. She was also the only one of five siblings who did not own shares in the family business, the world-renowned sauce maker Lee Kum Kee, headquartered in Hong Kong. For Elizabeth, it seemed natural not to own shares, as she had high respect for the traditional approach to succession planning, where females did not inherit a family business. Besides, she believed her brothers worked hard to build the firm's international reputation and therefore deserved the shares more than she did. Elizabeth was once again asked by her family to reconsider her decision not to own shares. This time, she could sense their determination to change the state of things.
This case describes how Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), a leading provider of broadband, IPTV, and long-distance services in Hong Kong with approximately 2 million Internet subscribers, went through a management buyout (MBO) transaction with CVC Capital Partners (CVC), a global private equity investment firm. Subsequently, the case describes how HKBN's unique corporate culture, particularly its Co-Ownership scheme, led the company from an MBO to a successful IPO. In May 2012, CVC along with key management team members purchased HKBN from Ricky Wong, a well-known Hong Kong entrepreneur in the technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) industry, and completed the MBO transaction. Through a series of value-added efforts made by both the management team and the CVC team, two years and 10 months after the MBO, HKBN made an IPO in early 2015, resulting in HKBN being one of the few successful MBO transactions in Asia. What are the key factors that contributed to this success within a short time? How should the management team ensure that these success factors, particularly the Co-Ownership scheme, continue to guide HKBN to success in its industry?
Cathay Capital Private Equity (Cathay) was started by Mingpo Cai and Edouard Moinet in 2007, at the brink of the global financial crisis. The firm initially opened offices in Shanghai and Paris, aiming to invest in fast-growing small and medium enterprises, either French companies looking to expand in China or Chinese companies seeking to move up the global supply chain in France. By the end of 2012, Cathay closed a EUR350 million second fund, and, planned to move beyond France and China, by looking at other European countries and the United States for potential deals. With the growing competition of local private equity (PE) firms in China and the ongoing European debt crises, was the firm ready to replicate its business model in other geographical markets in the near future? What did the firm have to do to ensure success in the long run?
The Chevalier case demonstrates how a family-controlled and publicly listed group can make use of a listed company's idle assets and turn them into a private equity-like endeavor generating better returns for all shareholders. Founded in 1970, Chevalier Group was a Hong Kong-based conglomerate operating a wide range of businesses. It was a negative change in the fortunes of the IT products distribution business that had inspired Oscar Chow, Executive Director and son of the group's founder, to enter the food and beverage (F&B) business in 2005. The purchase and subsequent sale of Pacific Coffee in June 2010 were landmarks to revitalize Chevalier Pacific Holdings Ltd under Chevalier Group. While parts of the business showed strong growth and recorded healthy profits, others had reached their peak and were showing signs of decline. By late 2011, Oscar was devising a long-term strategy leveraging the group's core competencies. What should the plan be and how should he implement it?