個案總覽

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and Barclays Bank PLC have signed an agreement to combine their retail, corporate and offshore banking operations in the Caribbean to create FirstCaribbean International Bank. In principle, it appeared that both parties were agreeing to a combination of their assets to form a new entity, in which case a new holding company could be constituted to absorb the assets being merged. Alternately, as Barclays interest in the merger was substantially greater than that of CIBC, the transaction could be construed as an outright purchase of the CIBC interests by Barclays. The problem with this second approach, however, was that Barclays Caribbean presently had no separate legal form in the region. This case illustrates the procedures for accounting for mergers and acquisition, and lends itself to discussion on a myriad of issues and concepts. This case may be taught on a stand alone basis or in combination with any of the four additional cases which deal with various functional issues regarding the actual merger/integration which occurred. The four additional cases are Harmonization of Compensation and Benefits for FirstCaribbean Bank, product 9B04C053; Information Systems at FirstCaribbean: Choosing a Standard Operating Environment, product 9B04E032; CIBC-Barclays: Should Their Caribbean Operations be Merged?, product 9B04M067; and Note on Banking in the Caribbean, product 9B05M015.

The managing director of MD Foods of Denmark and the president of Arla of Sweden, both cooperatives, were contemplating whether their companies should merge to create Europe's largest dairy company. Arla and MD Foods wished to continue the success of their joint ventures in a much closer relationship, but wondered if their owners (the milk-producing farmers in each country) would approve the merger. In addition, the two companies were different in size, organizational structure, organizational culture, monetary currency used and language spoken. Finally, a cross-border merger of two cooperatives was unprecedented throughout the world. The supplement Arla and MD Food: The Merger Decision (B), product 9B05M013 describes the merger decision.

FirstCaribbean International Bank was the new banking entity created from the combination of the Caribbean operations of two foreign banks, Barclays Bank plc of the United Kingdom and headquarters in London, England and CIBC - formally the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce - of Canada and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. A marketing team was formed with the specific responsibility of developing the marketing function and the brand strategy, as well as guiding the branding process of the new entity. The head of the marketing team has a number of concerns: Would geography, history and commercial practices support or mitigate against a single, centralized marketing strategy for the entire region, what should the new brand be and how should it be articulated, should the new brand reflect one or both of the heritage banks or should the new brand break with the past and reflect a totally new identity, and how quickly could the new brand be rolled out? This case may be taught on a stand alone basis or in combination with any of the five additional Cross-Enterprise cases that deal with various functional issues associated with the eventual merger: Human Resources - Harmonization of Compensation and Benefits for FirstCaribbean, product 9B04C053; Information Systems - Information Systems at FirstCaribbean: Choosing a Standard Operating Environment, product 9B04E032; General Management - CIBC-Barclays: Should Their Caribbean Operations Be Merged?, product 9B04M067; Accounting and Finance - CIBC-Barclays: Accounting For Their Merger, product 9B04B022; FirstCaribbean International Bank: The Marketing and Branding Challenges for a Start-up, product 9B05A012; and technical note - Note on Banking in the Caribbean, product 9B05M015.

The vice-president of a resort hotel in San Felipe, Mexico must deal with low winter sales levels. Students will gain experience in assessing the current marketing strategy, analyzing the fit of a new opportunity, making pricing decisions, designing a promotional campaign and calculating market share; and receive practice in using breakeven analysis and in analyzing an opportunity from both a qualitative and quantitative standpoint.

KTM is a successful European off-road motorcycle manufacturer with sales in 72 countries. KTM has been experiencing impressive growth in both its top and bottom lines over the past several years, but it is facing significant growth pressure from its venture capitalist investor. The chief financial officer must determine how the company could achieve its growth objectives. Options include geographic expansion (increase U.S. emphasis, or expansion to new European Union countries) or product expansion. Implementation options include a merger, acquisition or internal growth. Several opportunities for geographic expansion and product diversification exist, and implementation options include make, buy or ally decisions.

A junior executive is given the task of calculating a benchmark common in the ship building industry - cost per compensated gross ton. Although raw data is available for its components, the executive must formulate relationships between the data to determine the benchmark. The case is designed to provide: 1) an introduction to the construction and use of benchmarks in quality management; 2) practice in conceptualizing a problem and designing a basic spreadsheet model to solve the problem. The modeling procedure uses an influence diagram as the basis for constructing the spreadsheet model, this spreadsheet model is available, product 7B05D011.

The merger of the Caribbean holdings of Barclays Bank Plc. and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) is going ahead, and the reality of integration of very diverse systems and procedures has to be faced. The case deals with understanding the current situation in terms of existing policies and designing policies that would be acceptable to employees from both banks in the organization - FirstCaribbean International Bank - which would be created by the merger. A critical aspect of the merger is the harmonization of compensation and benefits that must be resolved as a matter of priority.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Barclays Bank PLC were in advanced negotiations regarding the potential merger of their respective retail, corporate and offshore banking operations in the Caribbean. Currently there are four systems in operation in the region. All are carry-overs from the pre-merger operation of the bank. Each of the systems has different pros and cons consisting of degree of fit with the organization strategy, likely impact on organizational culture, and functionality. As part of the effort to standardize practices across the organization, a choice for one standard operating system must be made. This case may be taught on a stand alone basis or in combination with any of four additional cases that deal with various functional issues regarding the actual merger and integration. The four additional cases deal are: CIBC-Barclays: Should Their Caribbean Operations be Merged?, product 9B04M067; Harmonization of Compensation and Benefits for FirstCaribbean Bank, product 9B04C053; CIBC-Barclays: Accounting for Their Merger, product 9B04B022 and Note on Banking in the Caribbean, product 9B05M015.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club, a non-profit gaming organization and social club founded in 1884, was unusual, for through its payment of taxes and donations to the community, it had over the years funded a sizeable portion of Hong Kong government expenses and charitable work. The newly hired director of the information technology department is concerned about inefficient operation. The IT division had been an established part of the club for many years, and throughout time, had been organized and reorganized to meet the changing needs of the club. A task force is put together and an external consultant is brought in to review the division's organization. Upon completion of the review, the director of the division learns that the person heading the review plans to resign and must decide what to do.

A recent MBA graduate is working as vice-president equity sales for an investment bank in the Ukraine. The firm's managing director has requested a recommendation regarding whether they should start investing in Ukrainian equities on their own account, or retain their practice of acting purely as an agent - buying and selling shares for clients without taking any ownership position.

For General Motors (GM) China, 2004 brought a wide variety of new challenges that added to an already complex business environment. Industry structure was changing quickly, demand and supply projections for motor vehicles had promised substantial increases in sales and profits but suddenly optimism faded. China's membership in the World Trade Organization created expectations of a level playing field for foreign investors, but major barriers remained, including continuing government intervention, competition from government-owned assembly firms, arbitrary rules such as sector-specific credit restrictions and violation of intellectual property with the copying of foreign automobile designs and false-branding of parts. Meanwhile, inflation was increasing and the government was unsure whether and how to use monetary and fiscal policies. This is an abridged version of GM in China, product 9B05M007.

The technical director of Shimla Dairy Products, a government-licensed food manufacturer, has spent time working in the cheese industry in Australia. He has returned to India and has new skills and ideas that he would like to share with the company. Cheese is a fairly new product in India and he must decide how best to take advantage of the growth potential in the Indian cheese market. He must consider issues of marketing, branding, production processes, operations and customer focus.

Bp's green re-branding efforts began officially with the unveiling of its new bp Helios mark, named after the Greek sun god. The new logo did away with 70 years of corporate branding, replacing the bp shield, long associated in consumers' minds with the strength of British imperialism. The Helios mark cost US$7 million to develop and was forecast to cost the company another US$100 million a year to integrate into marketing and operations over the next two years. At the logo's unveiling, the company's chief executive officer directed attention to the company's recent purchase of the solar energy company Solarex, an acquisition that made bp the world's largest solar energy company. The unveiling of the Helios logo was a formalization of a re-branding strategy that had begun to emerge the year before with the CEO's announcement that 200 new bp sites around the world would be powered in part by solar energy, through solar panels placed on the roofs of gas pumps, and his commitment to reducing bp's own carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent by the year 2010. From the start, however, environmental groups heaped scorn on bp's green re-branding. Greenpeace gave the company its Greenhouse Greenwash Award, given to the largest corporate climate culprit on earth.

According to the American Management Association, 25 per cent of companies are dissatisfied with outsourcing and more than half have brought outsourced services back in house. Education Development Center (EDC), a non-governmental organization, is an example of offshoring best practice and will help identify factors for successful implementation of an outsourcing project. The case starts with a description of EDC and its inability to manage a high level of growth with a fragmented and outdated information infrastructure. As a non-profit organization, EDC had different pressures on its cost and revenues that for-profit organization.

Capital Coast Health Limited is a public healthcare facility in central New Zealand. The new chief executive is confronted with serious internal problems and a persistent annual financial deficit that has been with the organization since its inception. Working in an uncertain and rapidly changing healthcare environment and constrained by government regulations, the chief executive officer must find a way to deliver quality care to the community and at the same time, motivate a large team of professionals who were already weary after years of change. The supplement Capital Coast Health Limited: Being a Good Employer in the Midst of Change (B), product 9B05M010 looks at one of the policies the chief executive officer must focus on.

The new chief executive officer of Capital Coast Health Limited, a government funded healthcare provider, has made many changes and succeeded in substantially reducing the financial deficit in his first year and a half. However, there were still a number of pressing concerns that needed to be addressed. The governing board of Capital Coast Health Limited has requested information about the Equal Employment Opportunity policies and practices in the organization. The request serves as a reminder to the CEO that internal issues should be a priority in the future. This is a supplement to Capital Coast Health Limited: Being a Good Employer in the Midst of Change (A), product 9B05M009.

This is a descriptive note of banking in the Caribbean region. It illustrates the complex and dynamic environment in which banking takes place in the region, and it serves as a background paper for the series of cases associated with the formation and operation of the FirstCaribbean International Bank.

Information technologies outsourcing is one the emergent fast-growth industries in the global high-tech economy. India is the leading country for IT outsourcing and Infosys is the largest Indian company in this sector. The branding challenge for Infosys is to leverage its reputation for predictable excellent results for information technology outsourcing. Management had identified overall company top-line revenue growth to achieve 30-40 per cent annual increases while allocating a negligible budget for marketing communications. Therefore, the key to the global brand strategy would not be through brand image advertising, but through communications of product strategy developments to large global IT outsourcing companies. The goal for Infosys is to be on the short-list of providers for the large, most sophisticated assignments for IT services to bid against IBM and Accenture, while leapfrogging over other competitors in the fast growing and fragmented information technology outsourcing market.

An engineer for Wind to Energy has led the creation of the North American division of a German start-up company that designs wind-energy electric power generation units - wind turbines. The engineer and his fellow engineers have licensed the technology to a small-share assembler of wind turbines and are about to receive their first payment from this firm. As they look ahead, they see opportunities for revenue in possibly supplying spare parts to wind farms, or even operating their own wind farm. The challenge is to focus this start-up company.

A loan assessment officer at Export Development Canada is evaluating a proposed deal involving the export of refurbished machines used in the forestry industry. He must decide whether Export Development Corporation should extend loans to a foreign firm that is interested in purchasing from a Canadian supplier. Issues include international business risk and the role of an export development agency in facilitating a country's exports.