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Yuser Inc. (Yuser) was a young Canadian start-up based in London, Ontario, and focused on developing a gamified media sharing mobile application to help connect businesses with influencers. Yuser's co-founders had released a marketable version of their app at the end of 2019, and in 2020, the company had nearly exhausted its seed funding. Yuser's top priority at this time was to secure outside funding to grow the company fast without breaking it. The available options for funding consisted primarily of three sources: venture capital, equity crowdfunding, and token issuance. As each funding option had its own benefits and drawbacks, Yuser's co-founders had to determine which option or combination of options would work best for their company.

This case is the first of a two-part series that follows Ramez Sousou and his team at TowerBrook Capital Partners as they face a challenging investment decision in February of 2013. Since its founding, TowerBrook has prided itself on its purpose-driven investing philosophy and responsible ownership practices, seeking to incorporate these ideals in each step of the life cycle of a deal. Thus, the TowerBrook investment process extends beyond financial returns and consideration for the bottom-line. This investment decision was a tough one: some TowerBrook team members were excited about the company's growth potential, while others were concerned about the optics of its social impact. Overall, this case can be used to understand how private equity firms are integrating ESG considerations into their decision-making processes.

This case is the second of a two-part series that follows Ramez Sousou and his team at TowerBrook Capital Partners as they face a challenging investment decision in February of 2013. It is intended to be distributed at the end of the discussion of "TowerBrook: ESG in Action (A)" (HBS No. 221-046). This case describes the outcome of the investment decision and the steps that TowerBrook has taken since 2013 to systematically address ESG considerations across the life cycle of their deals. It also discusses TowerBrook's B Corp certification process.

The case illustrates how Ping An can anticipate digital trends such as cloud computing and evolve from its core business to expand to new areas. Ping An began by selling property and casualty insurance but soon expanded to banking and financial services. The firm then invested heavily in I.T. development in order to take part in the Internet economy, focusing on five verticals: financial services, healthcare, automobiles, real estate and smart cities. In the five verticals, Ping An incubated 11 independent technology affiliates that dwarfed a valuation of $70 billion. By 2020, 3 companies were publicly traded as independent entities. Ping An was no longer a financial institution, instead, it had become a "finance + technology" and a "finance + ecosystem" company. While so many financial institutions and other traditional businesses always talk about digitization and transformation, but the progress is pretty slow. Ping An is in a very different place. The Ping An case is interesting both from a Chinese and a global perspective. As a firmly rooted Chinese firm, Ping An embodies the rise of a traditional company that learned to harness new technologies and compete with China's pure technology players. From a global perspective, Ping An offers lessons in how to develop an ecosystem of technology affiliates: the firm has developed a set of best practices for incubating, funding and collaborating with spin-offs.

While Ping An is so successful to transform and reinvent itself to a tech giant, it discovered the demand of small and medium sized financial institutions to deploy technology. In December 2015, Ping An set up OneConnect, a fintech spinoff, to export its internal technology and repackage them as services to other banks and insurance companies in China. Case (B) is about how Ping An incubated OneConnect and development of OneConnect. OneConnect is in an expansion phase, growing from its Chinese client base to offer its cloud-based services across Asia. At the beginning it relied very much on Ping An in terms of technology, people and other resources, and became more and more independently later on. OneConnect turned out to be a unicorn and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2019.

Case (C) is about Autohome, which is the only unicorn Ping An acquired, rather than built from the ground up. After acquisition by Ping An, Autohome was transformed form a pure automobile website to develop four key offerings - content, transaction, finance, and lifestyle - all powered by AI, big data, and cloud technology. After the acquisition, in the span of three and a half years, Autohome's stock price quadrupled.

The invention of antibiotics increased the average lifespan by two decades, though WHO warns that antibiotic resistant will become the most common death by 2050 if the resistance issue cannot be overcome. This paradox is an exemplary dilemma of the society's urgency of creating value, such as developing new antibiotic drugs, although the value creator may not be able to capture this value in a financially profitable way. The traditional business model of pharma is broken and no solution exists yet. Several diverse stakeholders with different interests are required to find a global solution to this complex problem. While no financial model provides a perfect solution for all involved stakeholders, it is important to make progress before the antibiotic resistant bacteria have made the drugs totally ineffective. For each financial model we will describe advantages and disadvantages, provide financial analysis and describe the implications for the ecosystem. Further, the different business model canvas from the view- point of a pharmaceutical company investing in antibiotics R&D. As the business model canvas is limited with providing the multi-dimensional overview of the stakeholders in the eco-system and their interaction, an approach to reflect all stakeholders in one table is provided.

Instructor spreadsheet to accompany product 8B12B025.

The case is set in December 2018, when Ziad Oueslati, co-managing director and co-founder of AfricInvest, a leading pan-African private equity firm headquartered in Tunisia, was reflecting on the future direction of his firm. AfricInvest started as a traditional small and mid-cap private equity fund, but over the years had expanded into multiple adjoined investment strategies. At the end of 2018, the team saw an opportunity in the venture capital (VC) space, but while some were adamant about the need to raise a VC fund, others were reluctant to add yet another strategy to AfricInvest's diverse investment strategies. The case presents a detailed insight into AfricInvest's journey from a $10 million Tunisian fund, to becoming a prominent regional player operating throughout the African continent with $1.5 billion of assets under management. Among other issues related to the firm's growth, the case provides insights into the challenges of operating in such a wide and varied geography as the African continent. The case also offers details on their multiple investment strategies, ranging from small-cap SME focused funds, to sector-specific funds, cross-border funds, and private credit. The case explores the synergies and challenges associated with such a wide-reaching investment platform. This is described against the backdrop of the collapse of Abraaj, a leading emerging market private equity firm, in a scandal that shook the investment community in the region. The case also touches upon the role of development finance institutions (DFIs) as investors in emerging markets and the challenges of defining and measuring impact investing. The opportunity of launching a pan-African VC fund in the context of the recent collapse of Abraaj brings to the forefront several strategic questions for AfricInvest's co-founders: Should they keep expanding into new strategies, or would it be better to roll back their existing ones to focus only on their flagship private equity funds?

The case introduces various forms of real estate investment trusts ("REITs") existing in different markets in the world such as REITs in the United States, Japanese REITs (J-REITs) and Singapore REITs (S-REITs). The development Hong Kong's REITs (H-REITs) market started in 2005 when Link Real Estate Investment Trust listed its shares on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK), following the promulgation of the REIT Code in 2003. Development was slow. There were 11 REITs listed between 2003 and 2013, with one being suspended for trading; there was no listing of new REITs for six years, until December 2019 when China Merchants Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust listed its shares on the SEHK. REITs had developed rapidly in overseas markets such as Australia and the United States since the 1990s and had emerged in other markets like Japan and Singapore since the 2000s. And mainland China was developing its REIT market and could soon become one of the world's largest. Under the presence of strong competitions from neighbourhood markets and the potential opportunities from mainland property firms' fundraising needs and the development of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, students take on the role of the SFC to consider how to better develop the Hong Kong's REITs market and make Hong Kong a capital formation centre for REITs.

Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women and families in the U.S. Hoping to leverage and expand her expertise in mission-driven investing, Erin Harkless Moore (HBS 2012) recently took on the role of new Director of Investments in Pivotal Ventures. As the company prepares for the new phase of growth that would improve its position in the Venture Capital (VC) market, Harkless Moore is tasked to select the next VC fund that Pivotal Ventures would participate in as an investor. Which VC fund would allow Pivotal Ventures to support more diversity in VC investing? Should she change the scoring and review process that ultimately led the decision of which opportunity to invest in? How could Pivotal Ventures perform well and generate high returns while staying in line with its organizational goals?

In the Spring of 2017, Soomin Kim, Founding Partner of Unison Capital Korea, and his team were debating the potential exit of Unison Capital Korea's investment in Gong Cha Korea, the sole local franchisor of the premium milk tea brand that they proprietarily sourced three years ago. Since acquiring Gong Cha Korea in 2014, Unison Capital Korea sought to transform what was an unorganized start-up into an established business by professionalizing its management and operations, expanding into untapped overseas markets, and even acquiring the master franchisor of the Gong Cha global business. In early 2017, however, Gong Cha Korea was showing mixed signals in terms of operational and financial performance when Unison Capital Korea received a soft bid for the company from a potential financial buyer. This bid offered an early exit opportunity at a modest return. Investment Committee members were divided. Several factors concerning value-add initiative were considered in evaluating this decision. What made it more complicated was that Gong Cha Korea was the first and largest deal of Unison Capital Korea. With these strategic considerations in mind, Soomin had to decide which path to take on his firm's biggest deal to date-should he pursue an early exit with modest yet certain returns or risk waiting in hopes of realizing the longer-term full potential of transformation?

By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated-$21 trillion of institutionally managed money now gave some consideration to sustainability. This case considers the two important questions surrounding a potential divestment: 1) Should the University alter its endowment's portfolio to meet broader social objectives, and 2) If so, how should it integrate climate objectives, or ESG considerations more generally, into its investment strategy and portfolio construction? In the case, the University is being advised on these questions by Nicole Abramson, an investment management professional specializing in ESG products. To formulate her recommendation, Abramson considers the views of Harvard's stakeholders and the sustainability best practices of institutional investors and asset managers around the world.

On September 25, 2019, an activist investment management company, which was sometimes referred to as the biggest activist hedge fund in the world, publicly released a detailed report advocating for Marathon Petroleum Corporation to be split into three separate companies, divided along three major business lines: oil refinery, midstream services (i.e., pipelines), and retail. The refinery company would consist primarily of 16 oil refineries in the United States and would retain the Marathon name. The midstream company, which would consist of pipelines, logistics, and oil terminals, would be formed from MPLX LP, the publicly traded subsidiary that was 63 per cent owned and fully operated by Marathon Petroleum Corporation. The retail company would be formed from Speedway LLC, the wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corporation that operated 3,923 retail locations across the continental United States. The investment company argued that Marathon Petroleum Corporation's shareholders stood to benefit considerably from the proposed split. Was the proposition a good idea?

Student spreadsheet to case W20821

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20N036.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20N036.

On September 25, 2019, an activist investment management company, which was sometimes referred to as the biggest activist hedge fund in the world, publicly released a detailed report advocating for Marathon Petroleum Corporation to be split into three separate companies, divided along three major business lines: oil refinery, midstream services (i.e., pipelines), and retail. The refinery company would consist primarily of 16 oil refineries in the United States and would retain the Marathon name. The midstream company, which would consist of pipelines, logistics, and oil terminals, would be formed from MPLX LP, the publicly traded subsidiary that was 63 per cent owned and fully operated by Marathon Petroleum Corporation. The retail company would be formed from Speedway LLC, the wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corporation that operated 3,923 retail locations across the continental United States. The investment company argued that Marathon Petroleum Corporation's shareholders stood to benefit considerably from the proposed split. Was the proposition a good idea?

In September 2014, a week before the UN Climate Summit, MSCI launched an innovative family of indices designed to allow investors to manage carbon risk in their portfolio. The MSCI Low Carbon Indices were developed at the request of, and with critical insight from two pension funds - AP4 of Sweden and FRR in France - which committed €2 billion, and Amundi, Europe's largest asset manager, which licensed the indices in order to offer low carbon funds (index mutual funds, ETFs) to other investors.

Spreadsheet supplement for case IN1678