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Marcos Galperin, a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business, founded Mercado Libre in 1999 with a vision to build an e-commerce company focused on serving the nascent but fast- growing Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets in Latin America. In the spirit of a Silicon Valley start-up, the company was started in a garage in Buenos Aires. By 2006, Mercado Libre hosted the largest online trading platform in Latin America. Just prior to the company's 2007 IPO, Mercado Libre achieved what eluded most internet start-ups―profit. It had recorded $52 million in revenues and $1.1 million net income for the full year in 2006. The IPO itself raised $289 million. By 2019 Mercado Libre was largest online commerce ecosystem in Latin America based on unique visitors and page views. It operated in 18 countries across Latin America: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and El Salvador. Over the past 20 years, Mercado Libre had developed a diversified business model, one aimed at boosting electronic commerce. With the Mercado Libre Marketplace as the hub and engine, the company developed additional business units to provide payment solutions, logistics, financing, advertising and software services. The Mercado Libre ecosystem was designed to provide users with a complete portfolio of services to facilitate commercial transactions and to provide buyers and sellers with an environment that fostered the development of a large e-commerce community in Latin America, a region with distinctive cultural and geographic challenges. Mercado Libre had penetrated Latin America; however, Mercado Libre faced a formidable competitor - Amazon. Amazon entered Latin America in 2012 and was rapidly expanding.

The Peruvian government saw the opportunity to leverage digital technologies to increase transparency, rebuild trust, competence and credibility, and get closer to its constituents. In October of 2016, with the mandate to "bring the Government closer to its citizens through innovation," the government launched the Innovation Unit. In Peru, there was an increasing disconnect between society, markets, and public institutions. Lower than expected economic growth, a growing number of middle class citizens with unmet aspirations, and corruption had widened the gap between government and its constituents. In 2015, almost 94% of Peruvians perceived their central government as corrupt (vs OECD average of 65%). With digital transformation leaders who included Daniella Raffo, Heidi Uchiyama, and Zoila Palma, the Peruvian government saw an opportunity to use digital technologies as one tool to tackle the challenge. Case number 2171.0

Supplement to 717028. The UK was due to leave the EU in March 2019 after a referendum vote in June 2016. Following additional extensions and multiple failed attempts to reach an agreement with Parliament, Theresa May stepped down as Conservative Party leader and was replaced by Boris Johnson. Johnson claimed that Brexit would happen "come what may". This case outlines the major controversial issues and compares Theresa May's agreement to Boris Johnson's.

The case, which is a disguised version of real events, is set in Kandahar, Afghanistan (2013) during the long running Afghan war. Lt. Paul Rickson, a Navy SEAL Platoon Commander, is leading a team of 30 US and Afghan soldiers on a mission to clear hostile forces in Maiwand Village. After a long day of various hostile activities and clearing Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's), he faces a tough choice that is filled with various tensions. After he directs a missile attack from a drone onto an enemy position, he's ordered to conduct an on the ground Battle Damage Assessment (BDA), to confirm there are no civilian casualties. This would require some or all of his team crossing 800 meters in open territory, almost certainly drawing enemy fire. He's concerned about the real risks to his team vs the perceived benefit of a US-forces taken picture. His has to reconcile a conflicting sense of priorities, from the Rules of Engagement for his team, the directive from HQ and inputs from his team. The primary purpose of the case is to focus on lessons from his decision-making approach that might be beneficial for a young leader facing conflicting tensions, such as: a. The strategic directive to win hearts and minds, while training Afghan forces vs. the on the ground facts and circumstances facing the platoon commander and the threats to his team. b. The predictability of support systems (e.g. communications, HQ guidance, video surveillance, transport) that can have outsized impact on options and outcomes. c. How substantial risks and core values come together in deciding what to do for you and your team.

The case, which is a disguised version of real events, is set in Kandahar, Afghanistan (2013) during the long running Afghan war. Lt. Paul Rickson, a Navy SEAL Platoon Commander, is leading a team of 30 US and Afghan soldiers on a mission to clear hostile forces in Maiwand Village. After a long day of various hostile activities and clearing Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's), he faces a tough choice that is filled with various tensions. After he directs a missile attack from a drone onto an enemy position, he's ordered to conduct an on the ground Battle Damage Assessment (BDA), to confirm there are no civilian casualties. This would require some or all of his team crossing 800 meters in open territory, almost certainly drawing enemy fire. He's concerned about the real risks to his team vs the perceived benefit of a US-forces taken picture. His has to reconcile a conflicting sense of priorities, from the Rules of Engagement for his team, the directive from HQ and inputs from his team. The primary purpose of the case is to focus on lessons from his decision-making approach that might be beneficial for a young leader facing conflicting tensions, such as: a. The strategic directive to win hearts and minds, while training Afghan forces vs. the on the ground facts and circumstances facing the platoon commander and the threats to his team. b. The predictability of support systems (e.g. communications, HQ guidance, video surveillance, transport) that can have outsized impact on options and outcomes. c. How substantial risks and core values come together in deciding what to do for you and your team.

The case discusses the rise of a global chain of hotels that originated in India in 2015/16 and grew to become one of the top five leading hotel chains in the world in about four short years. The story of OYO's meteoric growth illustrates the power of technology to transform emerging markets and disrupt established industries. OYO represents a classic case of an organization that leveraged the fragmentation associated with emerging markets and used technology to bridge gaps across the value delivery model to offer a predictable customer experience. It believes a large part of the value it has created in India relies on its use of predictive analytics, big data analysis capabilities, and the integration of enterprise systems at variable scale to allow even the smallest of operators to be able to utilize valuable insights to take advantage of the boom in travel. Since its inception in India, where it has thoroughly dominated the industry landscape in terms of the number of hotel rooms it controls through its franchise/lease/manchise agreements, it has expanded into other emerging market countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and China. It has been quite successful in these forays, barring some teething troubles that are typical of global expansion. However, as the case closes, the company had entered the developed markets of the UK, Japan, and had just arrived in the U.S., where it had made a large acquisition of a Hooter's hotel in Las Vegas, NV. The second round of expansion covering developed markets raises numerous questions regarding transportability of the model across two very different contexts, namely emerging markets, where the industry is fragmented, versus developed countries, where the industry is already dominated by famous brands.

The European Union rarely saw hostile corporate takeovers. The structure of corporate ownership and governance across most of Western Europe made gaining control - without the cooperation of the target firm - exceedingly difficult. Despite the challenge, Mittal Steel, the world's largest steel producer, was determined to acquire Arcelor, the world's second largest steel maker. The very public hostile acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel in 2006 was a study in the complexity of crossborder acquisitions. The fight-and it may be best described as a fight-involved Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based multinational steel company, deploying nearly every known defense mechanism to stave off Mittal Steel's hostile acquisition. Legal, societal, political, strategic, national, and even possibly ethnic differences and issues were deployed. In the end, despite larger-than-life personalities and the differences in corporate takeover law across countries, the outcome was driven by shareholder rights and returns.

In January 2020 South Africa was once again suffering an electrical power crisis as a series of rolling blackouts, load-shedding, crippled the people and the economy. This was the latest in a series of power crises dating back to 2007. These chronic shortages were the result of failures on the part of the national electrical power producer, Eskom, and its owner, the South African government. The costs to the people of South Africa and the South African economy were enormous. Eskom was now suffering what many termed a death spiral. Its failure to produce sufficient and reliable electricity was causing its financial performance to deteriorate, calling for higher and higher electrical power rates, leading to more and more customers reducing demand and even leaving the grid. Now in the throes of leadership change, corruption investigations, and potential insolvency, it and the country was in trouble. The people of South Africa wondered when their never-ending power crisis - now in its thirteenth year - would end.

The case of mysterious deaths of children caused by eating litchi, a popular fruit in Bihar, India provides the classic context. There have been instances of deaths of children in Bihar after eating Litchi and this has been going on for years. Many children were brought to hospitals with acute neurological symptoms like swelling of the brain, seizures, and convulsions, although strangely they seemed to have been healthy just moments before. These symptoms of the sick children were treated for Acute Encephalitis Syndrome in the region. It left the families of the children and neighborhoods perplexed, and even the doctors were at a loss in understanding the cause of the deaths. It was finally diagnosed in 2014, based on a research finding published in Lancet that these deaths could be due to hypoglycemia triggered by children eating litchi and skipping dinner thereafter. Another study by John had concluded similarly. They recommended administration of dextrose as the treatment which helped bring down the incidences. The government did try to implement their recommendations. However, the disease struck again in 2019 with the death of about 125 children. The disease and the deaths again brought to the fore all the questions. This case is about the reality of conflicting evidence, how the issue was handled by the government and the stakeholders' response. At the next level, the challenge for the government is how to communicate the diagnosis, treatment protocol, and precautions to the parents regarding the risk their children are exposed to on eating litchi when they are hungry. There was consensus about the findings and treatment procedures. Given this, the challenge is in communicating this to the healthcare providers as well as to the parents and the general public. It has to be done without creating panic about litchi. The government, as well as the growers, had the overriding concern that the controversy should not damage the market for litchi.

Bank of Baroda (BoB) is one of the oldest banks in India with a large international footprint. The bank was nationalized in 1969 and was under the control of the government. Ever since the India embarked on the program of economic reforms of 1991, there were efforts to address the structural and governance aspects of banks. The ideas around reform have included among other things - repeal of the Bank Nationalization Act, to bring it on-par with companies incorporated under the Companies' Act, disinvestment, and also consolidation of multiple banks. In an effort to infuse new thinking and to reform the banking sector, the government as a first step, appointed a non-executive chairperson and a chief executive officer laterally from the private sector in 2015. Therefore, BoB (along with Canara Bank) was seen as a bank where the early experimentation of reform in the sector could happen. However, subsequently, there have been mounting concerns in the banking sector which have created significant challenges associated with the banking reform process. This case thus illustrates and examines the challenges associated with the governance of a large bank with legacy systems and with multiple expectations from various stakeholders arising from the State being a part owner, and from customers, financial markets, and minority shareholders.

This case focuses on regulatory institutions in a fast-changing evolving policy domain of the telecom sector in developing countries, which are typically characterised by a weak institutional environment, making operationalisation of new instruments that may require regulation across sectors difficult. The case highlights the criticality of appropriate regulatory design for spectrum management since predominant access to voice and Internet in developing countries happens only on mobile phones. The case shows how the Competition Commission of India created a regulatory space for itself when a new instrument, Spectrum Trading, was announced by the Department of Telecom (DoT)/Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The case covers the two-year, on-again off-again negotiation between the Government of Uganda and the fearsome rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony. The negotiations marked a historic moment for many reasons. After decades of failing to root out Kony and his rebel army capable of horrific acts of violence, and faced with millions of internally displaced people, the Ugandan government embarked on peace talks with the LRA. But neither party had come to the negotiating table willingly. Kony faced arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity and the Ugandan government faced pressure from international donors and the pan-African leadership to find a peaceful solution to a long-simmering conflict. In the end, the negotiations didn't result in a peace agreement and Kony remained at-large, but these historic talks provide much fodder for analysis for students of negotiation and raise many critical questions, including on whether to pursue peace or justice. The case package includes a 16-minute video featuring an interview with Ruhakana Rugunda, the Government of Uganda's chief negotiator, and a 3:11-minute video where Luis Moreno Ocampo, former Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, talks about the Court's role. Rugunda's video consists of 11 clips that can be played separately during the class session to frame specific discussions, such as Kony and the ICC and what success would have looked like for the government.

The Dutch East India Company's board of directors must decide what to do about an impending legal requirement to liquidate the company's assets and return to shareholders their capital and any profits earned during a ten-year lock up period. The charter granted to the company in 1602 by the Dutch Estates General (legislature) required the liquidation and accounting to shareholders after the initial ten-year period and again at the end of a second ten-year period. However, the company's directors believe that more time is needed to reap the benefits of shareholders' initial investments and that liquidating the company's assets after the initial ten-year lock-up would make it impossible to raise capital for the second ten-year term. The case describes the origins of the Dutch East India Company, the world's first publicly-traded multinational company, and traces key aspects of the company's governance and development during its first ten years, including the emergence of disagreement among shareholders about corporate strategy and dividend policy.

The case relates the decision made in the A case and what happened in the aftermath.

In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China's economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country's leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling capital and exchange rates. These actions raised criticism from other nations, and in 2017 the U.S. initiated the U.S.-China Trade Wars, which enforced tariffs and requirements for increased transparency. As implications of the trade wars remained uncertain, many wondered whether the central bank would introduce further discreet steps to change the yuan. Would China's currency appreciate as substantially against the U.S. dollar as predicted by economists? And when would further change occur? The stakes were high; a freer yuan float would impact groups within and outside of China very differently. Would China's currency then be allowed to depreciate or appreciate if fundamentals required it?

The collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of revolutionary transformations for the states that emerged in its wake. The leaders of Russia, the USSR's successor, struggled to reestablish central authority while also seeking to avoid further disintegration, establish a democratic polity, and institute a market economy across the next several years. Russia would navigate further economic crisis and a swiftly evolving geopolitical order as it returned to the world stage. The case examines the different governance approaches adopted by Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, and concludes with a discussion of Russia's strategic challenges and opportunities in 2019. The case focuses on problems of state authority; fiscal capacity; institutionalization of political parties; relations between the federal center and provincial governments; relations between the state and big business; economic policy; international relations; and models of economic development.

For decades, Chile enjoyed the stability of being the world's largest producer of copper. Keynes would have advised that this period of growth would have been the time for the government to save, that "the boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury." If this wisdom has proven true on multiple occasions since Keynes's statement in 1937, why do countries continue to conduct procyclical fiscal and monetary policies? Economists have documented this phenomenon across countries and found that particularly for emerging markets, capital inflows tend to coincide with expansionary macroeconomic policies while periods of capital outflows correspond with contractionary policies. Why is it so difficult for governments of emerging market countries to save during economic booms? By analyzing economic and social factors that contributed to unrest in Chile, students will wrestle with economic and ethical questions about balancing the needs of current and future generations.

In the fall of 2018, Serbia found itself at a crossroads yet again. Following the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the collapse of Yugoslavia, the country had embarked on a slow and arduous process of accession to the European Union (EU). This had been further hampered by the country's tortuous relations to its breakaway province of Kosovo, one of several regions fighting for political independence at a time when the continent itself was seeking greater economic and political integration in the form of the EU. Support for the EU accession was falling in Serbia, however, also in light of the increasing presence in the country of Russian and Chinese interests and investments. But would the country eventually have to pick a side amidst the rapidly changing geopolitics of the early twenty-first century?