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LAB International (LAB) has two divisions that have vastly different strategies. The research and development division has a continuing need for funding and a high degree of risk, while the contract research division is a cash generator and is less risky. LAB is attempting to raise additional capital but believes that the shares of the company are undervalued in the market. It is contemplating a spinoff of one of the divisions to raise the funds and to make each company more of a pure play and therefore to achieve a more appropriate market valuation. Students must assess the merits of this strategy and place a value on the spinoff.

An analyst at IGM Financial (IGM) is asked to make a presentation outlining the final details of the proposed acquisition of Saxon Financial (Saxon). The analysis was to include the strategic rationale for the acquisition, an estimate of the proposed offering price for Saxon and whether or not the acquisition would be accretive to earnings per share of IGM. To complete the assignment the analyst had to calculate a preliminary valuation range based on several different valuation methodologies.

An analyst at IGM Financial (IGM) is asked to make a presentation outlining the final details of the proposed acquisition of Saxon Financial (Saxon). The analysis was to include the strategic rationale for the acquisition, an estimate of the proposed offering price for Saxon and whether or not the acquisition would be accretive to earnings per share of IGM. To complete the assignment the analyst had to calculate a preliminary valuation range based on several different valuation methodologies.

The boom years have made business careless with working capital. So much cash was sloshing around the system that there seemed little point in worrying about how to wring more of it out, especially if that might dent reported profits and sales growth. Today, capital and credit have all but disappeared, customers are tightening belts, and suppliers aren't putting up with late payments. It's time, therefore, to take a cold, hard look at the way you're managing your working capital. If you do, say Insead professors Kaiser and Young, you'll very likely find that you have an awful lot of capital tied up in receivables and inventory. In this article, the authors explore six common mistakes that companies make in this area: managing to the income statement, which can encourage executives to tie up capital in stock and receivables because income statements often fail to include important cost items; rewarding the sales force for growth alone, which makes concessions in the terms of trade more likely, as salespeople look for ways to get customers to buy; overemphasizing production quality, which often results in gold-plated and slow production processes; tying receivables to payables, because even an unfortunate and costly change in supplier terms should in no way be a reason for revisiting the customer relationship; applying bankers' current and quick ratios, which tends to increase the likelihood that a company will face a liquidity crisis; and benchmarking competitors, which can make managers complacent when their working capital metrics are in line with industry norms. Simply correcting these mistakes will release a lot of hidden cash.

The case introduces students to the nature of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and the CDO origination process, with emphasis on the corporate structure of the special purpose vehicles, cash flows to various CDO tranches, and motivation behind CDO origination. Students will learn to quantitatively evaluate the risk-return profile of CDO tranches with emphasis on the equity tranche (also known as "toxic waste"). This is ideal for MBA and advanced undergraduate level courses on financial markets, financial institutions, and investments. In the case, an associate at the Debt Capital Markets desk of Lehman Brothers prepares a CDO issuance for Western Asset. Western Asset had been contacted by a group of commercial banks eager to sell senior secured bank loans and high-yield corporate bonds to lower their capital requirements and free up capital for additional lending.

LAB International (LAB) has two divisions that have vastly different strategies. The research and development division has a continuing need for funding and a high degree of risk, while the contract research division is a cash generator and is less risky. LAB is attempting to raise additional capital but believes that the shares of the company are undervalued in the market. It is contemplating a spinoff of one of the divisions to raise the funds and to make each company more of a pure play and therefore to achieve a more appropriate market valuation. Students must assess the merits of this strategy and place a value on the spinoff.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 109076

This technical note describes some of the key issues that bank analysts, ratings agencies, and the market broadly examine to understand the financial health of a bank and ultimately to estimate its value. Specifically, the note discusses alternative credit quality, capital, liquidity, and profitability metrics and provides related terminology.

This note describes briefly bankruptcy regimes and out of court restructuring in 5 countries, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France and Japan.

A retired scientist and her partner want to start a company near London, Ontario, specializing in training horses for dressage competitions. The partners must ascertain whether the $100,000 they plan to invest will be sufficient to cover cash requirements, or whether a loan is required. Neither partner has had any business training, and they are unsure how to prepare proper financial statements. The partners wondered whether any further information was needed and what steps they would take to start the venture.

A privately held U.S. plumbing parts manufacturer is negotiating the purchase of a Brazilian plumbing manufacturer specializing in water conservation. The case provides sufficient information to value this cross-border acquisition and includes a brief summary of valuation techniques in this context. A particularly rich discussion arises from two points: A forecast of exchange rates from a forecasting company differs from forecasts based on inflation, and two methods are suggested for dealing with country risk (sovereign spread and scenario analysis).

Student spreadsheet supplement to case UV2541

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 209110

Thomas McDonald, senior vice president of Equity International, is weighing an investment in the Brazilian homebuilder Gafisa. Was this the right country? The right company? The right co-investor? The right time? McDonald would be investing alongside a Brazilian private equity firm, GP Investments, and must decide how to structure the investment. Especially, he must decide how to align his interests with those of GP. GP has recruited EI due to its prior experience with the Mexican homebuilder Homex. McDonald must also consider: Is that experience transferable to this investment?

A leading low income housing builder in Mexico decides which prospective new local partner best extends its advantages in managing twin production lines of homes and clients. URBI has built substantial competitive advantage in the technology and culture that matches the outputs of these two production systems. The company has also built extensive expertise in accessing the many mortgage and funding sources in Mexico. To grow, the company is interested in entering other Mexican geographies but faces a choice of doing this with its own staff and buying land for cash, or partnering with local entrepreneurs and local land owners. In evaluating the choices, students must think more deeply about what makes the two production lines work and how to balance the two lines. The discussion can end with comparisons of the Mexican political and government circumstances that encourage this method of producing workforce housing as compared with the U.S., China, India, and other markets.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Two very different ways of thinking about investment and risk are in competition. One emphasizes the financial risk of investing; the other concerns the competitive risk of not investing. In normal times, the bearishness of the former tends to complement the bullishness of the latter. But during extremes in the business cycle, the author argues, the balance between the two can break down. Specifically, companies seem to overemphasize the financial risk of investing at the bottom of the business cycle, at the expense of the competitive risk of not investing. This is dangerous, in the author's view, because it can create a lasting competitive disadvantage. Using examples from the semiconductor, paper and diamond industries, the author argues that it doesn't make sense to stamp out either financial or competitive risk, even though financial risk could be eliminated by investing not at all and competitive risk could be eliminated by investing indiscriminately. Instead, managers need to strike a balance between the errors implicit in these two types of risk: the error of pursuing too many unprofitable investment opportunities as opposed to the error of passing up too many potentially profitable ones. The original version of this article was published in the Sloan Management Review in Winter 1993. In this updated version, the author expands his views in light of the 2008 economic downturn.

This case describes the complexity of PepsiCo's competitive position in the Mexican soft drink market in late 1996. Following PepsiCo's anchor bottler in Mexico, Gemex, the case details the strategies employed by PepsiCo's senior management, beginning in 1993, to expand its market share versus its traditional "red nemesis," Coca-Cola. The various dimensions of PepsiCo's strategy-marketing, management, financial, strategic-are all seen to have deteriorated in the aftermath of the unexpected fall in the Mexican peso in December 1994. Focusing on the financial implications of the peso devaluation, the case then describes PepsiCo's response, which only seemed to increase the financial burdens imposed on the faltering Pepsi market share.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 209112.

This note addresses the question of valuation in the venture capital setting. It discusses the methodologies most commonly in practice for arriving at valuation. Because valuation methodologies can yield widely varying results, this note looks at valuation from many different angles. The note addresses critical questions including: What value should the entrepreneur put on his/her company when first raising capital? What should the venture capitalist (VC) pay to invest in the company? What is the appropriate valuation for subsequent rounds of financing? What is the right value at which to exit the investment?

Steel Partners is a U.S.-based hedge fund that has made a large investment in Japan-based wigmaker Aderans. The case is set at the close of the annual meeting in May 2008, when shareholders have voted against all incumbent board members. Steel Partners must act quickly. The case serves as an overview of corporate governance issues in Japan, as well as describing the costs and benefits of the "stakeholder" view of corporate governance.