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This case is written from the perspective of a member of Oracle's valuation team during Oracle's bid to acquire Sun Microsystems in 2009. Sun was an industry leader in the IT sector, and it had many suitors, including IBM. Oracle had distinguished itself as the world's largest and most reputable sellers of database management systems and other related software, and it had recently acquired several low-margin companies and turned them into higher-margin operations. Combining Sun and Oracle had the potential to create the Wal-Mart of the enterprise software industry. A supplemental student spreadsheet is available to verified users.

Set in India in 2009, the case is about Tata Steel Ltd (TSL), a global top ten steel producer. TSL's launch of a convertible bond offering in exchange for its convertible alternative reference securities issued in 2007 was in response to shifts in environmental factors. An analysis of the offer allows a valuation exercise and an assessment of a capital restructuring decision considering the interests of the issuer and of the investors.

The founding CEO of Triple Point Technology, Peter Armstrong, was considering the sale of the company. The company specialized in providing its clients with software used for transaction processing and risk management in various commodity markets. Triple Point Technology had grown substantially in its 13 years of existence and potentially was a source of a significant amount of wealth for its owners. The sale was prompted by a co-founder who wanted to sell his share of the business. The case explores the rationale for owners to monetize at least a portion of their company's value, the sales process, and compares two different offers from the perspective of the company's executives that will have a significant continuing interest in it.

This case analyzes Dow Chemical Company's proposed acquisition of Rohm and Haas in 2008. The $18.8 billion acquisition was part of Dow's strategic transformation from a slow-growth, low-margin, and cyclical producer of basic chemicals into a higher-growth, higher-margin, and more stable producer of performance chemicals. Simultaneously, Dow had signed a joint venture agreement with Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) of Kuwait, a deal that would generate $7 billion in cash that could be used to finance the all-cash offer to buy Rohm and Haas. Dow and Rohm announced the Rohm merger on July 10, 2008, just before the financial crisis in September 2008. The focus of the case is on what happened after the financial crisis turned into a global economic crisis. Dow, like all chemical producers, suffered as the global economy fell into recession during the second half of 2008, and as financial markets froze. To make matters worse, PIC cancelled the joint venture with Dow in December 2008. As a result, Dow was hurt on three fronts: first, it lost an important funding source for the proposed acquisition; second, Dow's financial condition and internal cash flow deteriorated dramatically (its stock price was down more than 70% during 2008); and third, Rohm's forecast sales, earnings, and value declined precipitously thereby reducing its attractiveness as an acquisition target. Given this confluence of events, Dow sued to cancel the merger agreement with Rohm in January 2009. Rohm responded with its own lawsuit to force consummation of the deal. As of February 2009, Dow's board of directors and its CEO Andrew Liveris have to decide what to do first and foremost about the Rohm acquisition and the pending lawsuits, but also about the firm's declining financial performance and the PIC joint venture.

Spreadsheet Supplement for 211020.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV5626.

The case explores Google's communication strategy with Wall Street analysts. In particular, the case focuses on Google's commitment to a no-guidance policy and provides an overview of guidance practice among major U.S. companies.

Given recent changes in market conditions and ongoing market uncertainty, an internal financial analyst at Heinz must estimate the company's weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Data for both Heinz and comparable firms are provided. The case provides opportunities for students to learn or practice a WACC calculation while exploring the economic meaning of inputs to the calculation.

Kishore Karunakaran, President and COO of FFCM, faces a variety of challenges in launching an innovative investment management business in the rapidly evolving ETF space.

Magna International, Inc., a Canadian-based automotive parts manufacturer, is considering whether and how to unwind its dual-class ownership structure. A family trust controlled by the founder owns a 0.65% economic interest in the company but has 66% of the votes via a super-voting class of shares. Officers of the company are considering how to fashion a transaction that will end the family's control and win the approval of both classes of shareholders. The Magna (A) case asks the students to weigh the costs and benefits of dual-class ownership and the best way to convert to single-class. The Magna (B) case describes the proposal that Magna's board put to a shareholder vote. Students are asked to evaluate it and decide whether they would approve it.

Magna International, Inc., a Canadian-based automotive parts manufacturer, is considering whether and how to unwind its dual-class ownership structure. A family trust controlled by the founder owns a 0.65% economic interest in the company but has 66% of the votes via a super-voting class of shares. Officers of the company are considering how to fashion a transaction that will end the family's control and win the approval of both classes of shareholders. The Magna (A) case asks the students to weigh the costs and benefits of dual-class ownership and the best way to convert to single-class. The Magna (B) case describes the proposal that Magna's board put to a shareholder vote. Students are asked to evaluate it and decide whether they would approve it.

Magna International, Inc., a Canadian-based automotive parts manufacturer, is considering whether and how to unwind its dual-class ownership structure. A family trust controlled by the founder owns a 0.65% economic interest in the company but has 66% of the votes via a super-voting class of shares. Officers of the company are considering how to fashion a transaction that will end the family's control and win the approval of both classes of shareholders. The Magna (A) case asks the students to weigh the costs and benefits of dual-class ownership and the best way to convert to single-class. The Magna (B) case describes the proposal that Magna's board put to a shareholder vote. Students are asked to evaluate it and decide whether they would approve it. Spreadsheet to (211044).

This note seeks to provide an overview of farmland investing; the investment thesis behind investing in agriculture, how and why investors would choose farmland, and the general risks and return characteristics of this asset class. In recent years, a growing number of individual and institutional investors have allocated a portion of their capital into agricultural farmland. Private investors, public companies, and sovereign wealth funds are now all currently purchasing and selling large amounts of farmland for profit.

Alejandro EIsztain, CEO of Cresud S.A., is faced with the difficult choice of whether to sell, develop or continue to hold the 151,000 hectares of remaining undeveloped farmland at the company's Los Pozos farm in Argentina. Developing the land will further expose Cresud to a variety of risks related to owning and operating farmland, but the potential financial rewards are potentially significant. As competition has increased and farmland values have skyrocketed in the last eight years, Cresud's overall corporate strategy has been to increasingly focus on development opportunities outside of the country - in areas such as Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Alejandro's looming decision on Los Pozos is in many ways, reflective of choices facing his company, in general.

The case presents the situation faced by the board of directors at Hydro One, a government-owned Canadian electric utility, as they discuss updating the current executive compensation packages because of the pending privatization of Hydro One. As a government owned enterprise, compensation was moderated by the job security and prospects of career advancement in the public sector, but the imminent privatization required the compensation system to be revisited. The case presents details of the current compensation system for Hydro One's key officers and the comparative data for their counterparts at similar firms. The case allows for discussion of the interplay between corporate governance processes, the corresponding responsibilities of directors and the decisions they make, in particular chief executive officer and executive compensation. The postscript to the case allows for a lively class room discussion of corporate governance, fiduciary responsibility and communication among major stakeholders.

The chief financial officer of Granite Apparel is trying to determine which of the three fundraising options is optimal for Granite Apparel to finance a projected rapid growth strategy. The three options are an initial public offering of equity, a privately placed debt issue and a private placement of preferred shares.

The case provides students with (1) an understanding of the essence of long-term financial health; (2) familiarity with the calculation and meaning of various financial ratios; and (3) an understanding of the influence of a company's operating and competitive characteristics on its investment in various type assets, on the profitability of these investments, and on the financial structure of its balance sheet. The case also allows a discussion of (1) the incomplete and lagging nature of financial measures; (2) the influence of financial measures on behavior; and (3) the reality that financial analysis often results in better, more focused questions to be asked of management, not conclusive answers.

Husk Power Systems, a young but widely celebrated firm based in India, needs $1.5 million to $2.5 million of expansion capital to grow quickly beyond the small footprint it had established in northeast India. It is a successful green energy enterprise that aimed to provide electricity to millions of rural Indians in a financially viable way. With 10 "mini power plants" that use rice husks as a fuel source and a presence in 25 isolated Indian villages as of April 2009, the company's goal was to reach 350,000 to 400,000 consumers in 400 villages by the end of 2011. It is offered a convertible note financing structure by a cleantech private equity firm and needs to assess whether it suits the company's and founders' interests.

The executive director of an independent charitable foundation is thinking about whether to hedge his foundation's U.S. dollar exposure given the large swings in the Canadian dollar-U.S. dollar exchange rate. For the past four years, the weakening U.S. dollar has contributed to underperformance in the foundation's portfolio relative to its peers.

In the fall of 2009, Fred Hochberg, Chairman of The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), and his team struggled to find a way to help finance the sale of Boeing aircraft to Emirates. Ex-Im responds to the challenges in the credit market with an innovative offering. This case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the structure and activities of an export credit agency and to value the expected costs of issuing a loan guarantee.