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Stone Group Corp., one of the largest electronics manufacturers and distributors in China, practices transfer pricing, an allocation process that assigns costs, sales revenue and gross profits to each of its five divisions. When a customer approaches the company with an order and requests a recommendation for a multimeter model, the general manager of the Instruments Division is asked to quote a transfer price for the multimeters. He must decide whether to sell some of his stock to another Stone division (losing the sales revenue, but perhaps gaining the gross profit needed to meet the division's monthly profit quota) or to keep the product in stock for possible sales (and greater revenue and profit) during the company's fourth quarter.

Beijing Biotech Corporation is a leader in biochip research and development in China. The president and chief executive officer must decide whether his company should go ahead with the Biochip Scanner project - a process that would read and analyse the information on biochips. He has some estimates of research and development costs and variable costs of the expected final product, however he doesn't have enough information about the market and customers. He must analyse the industry and competition, and fully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of his company.

Tricon Logistics China is the logistics department of Tricon Restaurants International (China) and is responsible for supervising the operations and cost management of supplies to Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut restaurants from 12 distribution centres in China. The market manager of one of the regional companies is concerned about the performance of his company's affiliated distribution centre in Suzhou. The director of Tricon Logistics China must determine why the actual cost of the distribution centre have exceeded the targets by analysing performance, cost variance and internal price negotiation.

The president of a new hotel venture faces a financing decision. The choices include: mortgage debt, common stock, or preferred and common stock. The president has to balance the impact of the financing alternatives on the viability of the venture, her investment returns, the investment returns of prospective outside investors and the financial and business risks.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 103007.

Sanjay Kumar, the CEO of Computer Associates, faces investor communication challenges following the company's implementation of a new business model and the accompanying change method used to recognize revenue. Despite management's confidence that the new business model is working effectively, the firm's stock price falls significantly and a major shareholder challenges management through a proxy contest.

Spinouts rarely take off; most, in fact, fall into one or more of four traps that doom them from the start. Some companies spin out ventures that are too close to the core of their businesses, in effect selling off their crown jewels. Sometimes, a parent company uses the spinout primarily to pawn off debt or expenses or to quickly raise external capital for itself. Other times, a company may try to spin out an area of its business that lacks one or more of the critical legs of a successful company--a coherent business model, say, or a solid financial base. And in many cases, parent companies can't bring themselves to sever their ownership ties and give up control of their spinouts. R.J. Reynolds, the tobacco giant, managed to avoid these traps when it successfully spun out a most unlikely venture--the pharmaceutical company Targacept. As the story illustrates, the problem with spinouts is similar to the problem of rich children. Their parents have the wherewithal to spoil them or shelter them or cling to them, but what they need is tough love and discipline--much the same discipline that characterizes successful start-ups. R.J. Reynolds recognized that it didn't know that much about the pharmaceutical business and couldn't merely try to spin out a small clone of itself. It had to treat the venture as if it were essentially starting from scratch, with a passionate entrepreneurial leader, a solid business plan, help from outside partners in the industry and, ultimately, substantial venture backing. That these lessons are less obvious to executives contemplating spinning out ventures closer to their core businesses may be why so many spinouts fail.

This case is used to study cost-based decision analysis. It has incremental, variable, semivariable, and sunk costs in a classic cost-price-volume situation, set in a service business.

A village leader must reallocate farmland and decides to hold a competition among the three most capable farmers in the village. The contract to the farmland will be awarded to the farmer with the best performance in the growing season. The growing season is over and the village leader must review the farmers' capital structure, capacity, and leasing costs, and make his decision.

The owners of the Video Vault struggle to determine the optimal stocking levels of home videos in an industry fraught with new technology, new pricing paradigms, and stiff competitive pressure from large national chains. Teaching Purpose: To demonstrate the role of incentive contracts in achieving supply chain coordination.

An automotive components company uses a supplier scorecard to make sourcing decisions and review its supplier performance.

The Royal Bank of Canada uses customer relationship management and customer profitability tools to gain a competitive advantage in Canada's increasingly crowded financial services market. The case presents two pricing and customer management issues: one from the point of view of the vice president of customer relationship marketing and the other from a line manager's perspective.

In 1993, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued two statements--Number 116: Accounting for Contributions Received and Contributions Made and Number 117: Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Organizations. These statements required significant changes to the financial statements issued by nonprofit organizations. This case discusses changes in the context of Stanford University, a private, not-for-profit educational institution. Discusses financial reporting prior to FAS 116 and 117, the objectives of FAS 116 and 117, and their implementation by Stanford. Prepares students for a discussion of nonprofit financial reporting, fund accounting, donor-imposed restrictions, the various stakeholders, and the advantages or disadvantages of financial statements prepared under the provisions of FAS 116 and 117.

The Royal Bank of Canada uses customer relationship management and customer profitability tools to gain a competitive advantage in Canada's increasingly crowded financial services market. The case presents two pricing and customer management issues: one from the point of view of the vice president of customer relationship marketing and the other from a line manager's perspective.

Describes activity-based budgeting at W.S. Industries. Also describes target costing-led product redesign, and product, customer, and order profitability.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 102063.

Nanjing Chuangqi is a small auto parts manufacturing firm. The general manager of the company is deciding whether the company should integrate its product line from existing universal joint and steering shaft to steering column and whether the major processes involved should be outsourced or made internally. Using breakeven and net present value analysis, he must consider the impact on the company and the auto industry when China joins the World Trade Organization and import tariff barriers are removed.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 102051.

The history, current dynamics, and future trends of the $10 billion home video rental industry provides a platform to discuss revenue-sharing contracts between suppliers of home videocassettes and retailers.

The global insurance industry is in the process of dramatic transformation. Whereas reinsurance has historically been highly globalized, life and nonlife insurance have traditionally been confined to national markets by legal, tax and regulatory regimes. With some of the major national markets often heavily saturated, major insurance groups have looked aggressively outside their home countries for growth, usually though acquisitions. At the same time, the way insurance has been made available to customers is undergoing significant change, not least through the Internet, even as competition for the insurance industry comes from the capital markets, asset management firms and banks. The industry is in a stage of competitive turmoil, and few pretend to forecast to it will all turn out. This case deals with two of the leading continental European players in the global insurance industry, which has made major acquisitions in the UK, the US and elsewhere in an attempt to be among the most competitive and profitable firms in their industry. The way they are going about this, however, is very different. This case requires students to assess the strategies of AEGON N.V. and Groupe AXA from the perspective of both positioning and execution, and come to a judgment which of them has the greater promise in terms of shareholder value.