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After independence in 1947, the government of India founded the Industrial Finance Corporation of India as the first development financial institution to provide medium- and long-term loans to public limited companies and cooperative societies engaged in productive activities. Then in 1991, the government’s New Economic Policy opened the door to liberalization, privatization and globalization of the Indian economy. The company was restructured and incorporated in 1993 but was unable to diversify its business model from project financing to other financial services. By 2004, it had almost collapsed; its profitability had become negative. Non-performing assets had reached their peak, and the company did not have money to do business. It began selling off and/or renting out its premises, going door-to-door to save its future, and employee morale hit rock bottom. The business had become unsustainable and unviable. With this as backdrop, the board of directors needs to decide on the company’s future. What is their best option: liquidation, restructuring, merger or strategic partnership?

A wealth management company in Chile that provided financial advisory services to high net worth individuals and pension funds was at a crossroads. After 15 years in business, the company had become very successful. To increase its value without incurring undue corporate financial risk, the owner, who has invested most of his personal wealth in the company, has the opportunity to make an investment in a similar wealth management company in Colombia. What are the risks and rewards of such a complex international merger and acquisition for this medium-sized enterprise operating in an uncertain political and economic environment?

New MBA graduate Larry Steffen has accepted an attractive job offer from Athena Global Technology but must now choose one of two alternative compensation plans. The first compensation plan option includes a base salary plus a $25,000 cash bonus, and the second includes the same base salary plus employee stock options. In order to evaluate and decide on one of these plans, Larry must estimate the value of the offered stock options and consider several complicating factors, including whether he will remain at Athena for the five-year vesting period necessary to receive the options. This case introduces students to option valuation and facilitates a discussion about the effectiveness and potential benefits and problems associated with the use of stock options in compensation packages.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Product #914517.

Providing affordable housing to a rapidly increasing low income group population in Urban-Semi Rural India remains one of the biggest challenges as well as opportunities faced by the Housing Finance Sector. Several new housing finance companies such as Shubham Housing Finance have pioneered a "small ticket" loan product to address the market gap. They recognize that these customers are not "high-risk" as perceived by conventional financiers, but "unknown risk". To assess this "unknown risk", they rely on detailed, field-based verification rather than on formal financial documentation. The primary objective of this case is to analyze the past data from these field level interactions and the eventual credit evaluation decision to determine the factors which result in a favorable decision. The application scoring model is expected to deliver a competitive edge to Shubham's operations by enabling faster decisions earlier in the assessment phase, targeting applicants more likely to pass through to the credit worthy status, standardize applicant evaluation across the nation and enable Shubham to offer competitive products. The objective of the case is to predict the probability of loan sanction using the socio-economic attributes of prospective loan applicants by employing techniques such as chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) and binomial logistic regression.

Spreadsheet Supplement for IMB445

The partners of Saito Solar, a privately owned photovoltaic (PV) solar panel manufacturer in Japan, received an unsolicited proposal from an investment bank about their interests in selling the firm. The firm had experienced steady sales decline in recent years, due mainly to intense competition from low-cost solar panel manufacturers from China. However, in 2012, the solar industry in Japan received new signs of life. The threat of radiation from the nuclear plant explosions due to a deadly earthquake in 2011 had prompted Japan to look for alternative energy. On July 1, 2012, the Japanese government implemented a new feed-in-tariff of 42Â¥/kWh (about US$0.53/kWh) for solar energy. This tariff was almost twice as large of that in Germany and three times of that in China. This incentive was predicted to produce solar energy that would rank Japan as one of the largest in the world in solar capacity. The partners of Saito Solar were excited about the investment bank's solicitation and wanted to find out how much the firm was worth. The cash flow projections incorporating the positive outlook of the Japanese solar industry were provided. The partners discussed valuation using discounted cash flow (DCF) approach, so it is a perfect case to introduce beginner finance students the proper and common way to value a firm using DCF.

In June 2013, Elan's shareholders (Elan Corporation, NYSE: ELN) were faced with a difficult choice. Elan's management had four proposals on the table, management's attempt to defend itself against a hostile takeover from Royalty Pharma. Royalty Pharma was a private company, a private equity-owned collector of biotech and pharmaceutical royalties. If shareholders voted in favor of any of the four initiatives, it would likely kill Royalty Pharma's offer-and its guaranteed returns. That would allow Elan to stay independent, and remain under the control of a management team generally considered as underperforming.

After an unusual round of doubles in May 2011, real estate investor Bobby Turner, Managing Partner, Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund (CACSFF) and Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, found himself at a loss for words. Turner was in the midst of raising capital for the CACSFF, a vehicle designed to promote the success and growth of best-in-class charter schools by acting as a for-profit "bridge" developer of educational facilities throughout the United States. He thought he had found the perfect investor in Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist, who for years had been an outspoken supporter of education reform. But as he made his pitch on the tennis court alongside his partner, retired professional tennis star Andre Agassi, and Andre's wife, retired professional tennis star Steffi Graf, he realized he would encounter more resistance than originally expected. Despite Gates' fascination and intrigue with the pair's novel concept, he was hesitant to mix the non-profit oriented efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with a for-profit private equity investment. Turner had heard similar concerns from other philanthropists and foundations. Furthermore, the fund's characterization as a social enterprise left unanswered questions regarding how making a positive impact could be juxtaposed with efforts to maximize investor profits. What started off as the match of the century ended rather unceremoniously as Gates graciously declined the opportunity to invest in CACSFF. As Turner and Agassi walked off the court, they realized they would have to go back to the drawing board to better gauge which investors would have an appetite for this type of investment and how best to market the fund to those parties going forward.

In late July 2013, Danielle Engle, Managing Director of Clairemont Capital, was contemplating what to do about a large investment her fund had in the stock of Yahoo! Inc. In mid-2012, Clairemont had invested nearly $75M in Yahoo! after the tech company settled a highly visible proxy fight with prolific activist investor Daniel Loeb of hedge fund Third Point. Since that time, Loeb and his colleagues had joined the board, the company had hired a new CEO and the stock price was up nearly 80%-increasing the value of Clairemont's investment by $60M in less than a year. But Yahoo! had just announced an agreement to buy back two-thirds of Third Point's stake in the company. It had also announced that Loeb and two other company directors appointed at his request would step down from the board. At the same time, Alibaba, the giant Chinese e-commerce company of which Yahoo! owned a sizable stake, was widely expected to go public in the near future. What should Clairemont Capital do with its investment in Yahoo! in response to this news? This case provides students with opportunities to discuss shareholder activism, the interaction between a company growth strategy and business model and its valuation, discounted cash-flow valuation analysis, multiples valuation, transaction-based valuation, and company valuation by parts.

A good financial system is essential for a well-functioning and efficient economy. It allocates capital to its most productive uses and manages risk. However, financial systems are fragile, and this fragility can cause financial crises which usually impact the real economy, as Japan and the United States have experienced. The causes of a financial crisis are many and varied, but commonalities exist. Financial crises usually create long periods of slow economic growth.

In this article, we present an overview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the financial sector. We focus on how socially responsible investment and shareholder activism have been integral parts of corporate social responsibility in the financial sector. We examine how the financial sector and its firms are evaluated and rated via a sustainability index, the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, and show that even leading financial institutions do not employ proactive practices regarding socially responsible investment and shareholder activism. Finally, we provide examples of two companies, UBS AG and the Co-operative Banking Group, that do utilize proactive practices.

In this Executive Focus article, Emory Zink and Travis Selmier interview John Succo, an expert on derivatives securities and securities trading, who discusses the technical nature and the policy debates regarding how high frequency trading (HFT) and so-called 'dark pools' affect equity trading. Succo, a co-founder of one of the world's largest derivatives-trading hedge funds, deflates the arguments that HFT adds to liquidity, showing us how the mechanism of HFT actually removes liquidity from the market. Wondering why regulatory authorities accepted speed in lieu of liquidity, he finds politics and lobbying as key factors. Dark pools, on the other hand, are trading arrangements that benefit both their members and the general trading public by dampening stock price swings. This interview addresses many questions about HFT and dark pools.

Hideo Seto, the recently appointed chairman of the investment committee of the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation, must decide whether to push JAL group, Japan's largest airline, into bankruptcy or to act as a sponsor in an out-of-court restructuring. The bankruptcy of JAL would be the largest ever for an industrial firm in Japan's history. The case introduces the mechanics of bankruptcy, the tradeoff between out-of-court restructuring and bankruptcy, and the costs of financial distress. At the level of public policy, the case also serves as a useful backdrop to discuss the role of bankruptcy in the efficient functioning of the economy, and the related comparison between Japan and the U.S. in terms of both the bankruptcy code and the cultural attitudes toward corporate restructuring. This case can fit into an introductory course in a module on capital structure and the tradeoff between the costs and benefits of debt or in an advanced corporate restructuring course in a module on the effect of different legal and cultural environments on bankruptcy proceedings.

On June 27, 2012, the storied British bank Barclays admitted that it repeatedly attempted to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) over a four-year period from 2005-2009. In its settlement, Barclays agreed to pay $453 million in fines and penalties to bank regulators in the U.K. and U.S. The media decried Barclays' rate-rigging efforts as "the scandal of all scandals" and bemoaned the spread of "Wall Street sleaze." By late 2012, dozens of other banks did indeed face LIBOR-rigging inquiries by regulators in various countries. This case delves into the scandal, exploring how the rate-rigging worked, who knew what when, and how the blame was laid, allowing students to explore the social and situational pressures involved in the rigging of the LIBOR.

In mid-March 2011, the vice-chairman of National Bank Financial had to decide what price to recommend to his Maple consortium partners for the TMX Group Inc. (TMX). The TMX was the owner and operator of Canada's leading cash and derivatives exchanges. The vice-chairman was leading a consortium of Canadian banks that was planning an unsolicited bid in response to merger talks between the TMX and the London Stock Exchange Group. The case allows for a discussion of mergers and acquisitions and the factors behind merger waves, the mechanics of a hostile bid for a publicly listed company, the changing landscape for stock and derivative exchanges, the valuation of a target company, and the distinction between strategic and financial buyers. An Excel spreadsheet for students is available.

A vice-president of a hedge fund must determine whether his fund will take a 5 per cent equity stake in Premier Foods Plc (Premier). At the time of the case, Premier, a publicly listed U.K. food and beverage company, was heavily indebted following a period of aggressive acquisition growth. Moreover, Premier had issued interest rate swaps on the majority of its debt. As the financial crisis unraveled, interest rates dramatically declined, and Premier’s interest rate swaps appeared to be further draining the firm. Against this backdrop, the case sets its ultimate objective, which is to simulate the vice-president’s analysis of the firm’s debt, interest rate swaps, caps and floors before deciding whether to invest in Premier.

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?

Abridged supplement for case 213102, for instructors who wish to have students review in class.