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Julio Martinez finds himself as one of the owners of the Arts Hotel Project in Barcelona, Spain. The 455-room hotel is managed by the Ritz Carlton and is in a 44-story tower along Barcelona's beachfront. Julio needs to figure out a strategy to maximize his investment, including a negotiation of the Ritz's operating agreement. Includes color exhibits.

Istituto Clinico Humanitas is a newly built private hospital, south of Milan, Italy, that has attained unusual profitability while treating public system patients. The hospital was built and is managed by Techosp, a subsidiary of Techint, a global engineering and consulting firm. Techosp created a design and management system that emphasizes optimizing patient throughput and utilization of all of the hospital's facilities. Physicians are all fully employed and have a significant financial incentive to maximize efficiency. The executive team is now considering whether to affiliate with the University of Milan medical school and, in effect, become Italy's first private academic medical center. The general manager must consider the effect of this affiliation on the hospital's performance.

In response to Stanley Work's announcement that it is moving to Bermuda--and the associated jump in market value--a major competitor sets out to determine how the market is valuing the consequences of moving to a tax haven and whether his company should invert to a tax haven. In particular, the competitor's CFO needs to attribute Stanley's stock price movements across several dimensions of potential tax savings (tax savings on foreign operations and on interest payments) to see if there might be something else at play (earnings stripping). In the process, the mechanics and incentives created by the international tax regime are illustrated. To obtain executable spreadsheets (courseware), please contact our customer service department at [email protected].

GolfLogix has developed a small, GPS-based device to help golfers track their play. They must decide how best to distribute these devices: 1) sell them directly to golfers through traditional retail channels; 2) sell them to courses, which would then provide them to golfers as part of their greens fee or for a nominal rental charge; or 3) simultaneously sell them to both groups. Complicating the decision is the fact that GolfLogix has two devices it is trying to sell: a distance-only device, which tells golfers how far they are from the green, and a complete device that additionally allows golfers to track how far and how accurately they are hitting the ball with each club and how many putts they are taking on each hole. The distance-only device is easy to use and explain, whereas the complete device likely requires some support from the golf courses. Contains color exhibits.

Describes how Bank of America is creating a system for product and service innovation in its retail banking business. Emphasis is placed on the role of experimentation in some two-dozen real-life "laboratories" that serve as fully operating banking branches and as sites for testing new ideas and concepts. Focuses on: 1) how learning from experimentation can be maximized; 2) incentive and reward systems that motivate employees to experiment in "life" environments; and 3) the challenges of managing innovation in an industry that eschews risks, failure, and change.

Metro, a German wholesaler, sued Cartier, a French luxury retailer, to require Cartier to honor Cartier's guarantee on its watches that Metro sold, even though Metro is not part of Cartier's selective distribution network. Is such a network incompatible with the European Union Treaty?

Silhouette, an Austrian eyeglass frame manufacturer, sued Hartlauer, an Austrian retail discounter, for reselling Silhouette frames within the European Union (EU) that Hartlauer had purchased outside the EU. Does the EU follow the principle of exhaustion of trademarks?

This case examines issues of asset control for Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., in light of the outstanding takeover offers by Chartwell Investments, Dreyer's Grand, Unilever, and Meadowbrook Lane Capital in January 2000. The case provides a unique opportunity to discuss fundamental firm objectives and the implications of a nontraditional corporate orientation; it reviews the development of Ben & Jerry's strong social consciousness and the takeover-defense mechanisms that maintain management's control on company assets. Students, in the role of outside board members, are invited to review management's performance, estimate the economic cost of its social agenda, and evaluate the implications of takeover defense strategies. Ultimately, they must take a position on whether Ben & Jerry's should continue to independently pursue its social agenda or accept one of the attractive takeover offers and accept a shift toward greater profit orientation. The case requires relatively little prior finance knowledge, and is designed largely to provide a stimulating introduction to the principles of a traditional corporate finance curriculum.

The concept of exposure, or uncertainty that matters, is developed as the target of hedging. Then, how to hedge that exposure--in particular, how to use regression analysis to obtain a hedging ratio--is described. The note concludes with a discussion of hedging multiple uncertainties and how to use correlations in developing a hedging strategy.

In Egypt, Genzyme's humanitarian commitment to treat all sufferers of the rare Gaucher disease worldwide first confronts its commercial imperative to recoup the huge investment required to bring the drug Cerezyme to market. Here Tomye Tierney must decide how to balance the demands of the sales organization that faces saturating developed markets, but major growth opportunities in developing economies. They believe that as long as the Gaucher Initiative-Genzyme's partnership with Project Hope-is providing free Cerezyme, they will be unable to convince the Egyptian government to authorize reimbursement, which can run from $200,000 to $300,000 per patient annually. CEO Henri Termeer believes Genzyme can hold firm to both the humanitarian commitment and its strong patient-focused commercial objectives. But it is Tierney who is on the front line and negotiates the delicate agreement between Genzyme sales, Project Hope, and Egyptian authorities.

MedCath is a horizontally integrated chain of heart hospitals that partners with local cardiologists. It claims that its focus leads to better and cheaper results than those of an everything-for-everybody general hospital. Community hospitals generally vehemently oppose their entry into a new area. What options does MedCath have?

The management team at Athleta is attempting to raise equity capital for the company in March 2002. Athleta is a catalog and online retailer of women's athletic clothing. The company has made substantial progress, with anticipated 2002 sales over $20 million, but has been undercapitalized. Given the decline in values in the capital market in early 2002, the company has limited prospects for raising capital on attractive terms.

Describes the background, process, and aftermath of the merger between Daimler-Benz of Germany and Chrysler Corp. of America. Describes the economic structure and trends of the world automobile industry at the turn of the century as well as the individual histories and strategies of the two firms. Further describes the process and key issues in the merger negotiations. Lastly, an extensive description of the post-merger integration plan, approach, and implementation is provided, along with an explanation of the merger's impact on the performance and strategy of the combined company.

This case illustrates managerial dilemmas that might arise when a company's offices are located in different countries, with different cultural and social styles and practices. The case also highlights how one might deal with personnel issues when many factors--including leadership, employee well-being, and different cultural norms--all present problems.

This case has been used since 2004 in Darden's first-year Global Economies and Markets MBA course in the module on exchange regimes and financial crises. In the early 1990s, in response to massive foreign capital inflows, the Chilean government restricted the flow of capital into the country in order to achieve a competitive and stable exchange rate and to control inflation. By the late 1990s, with the onset of the financial crises in emerging-market economies, investors began to pull their capital out of Chile and other emerging markets indiscriminately. This sudden reversal of capital flows was threatening to ignite a balance-of-payments crisis in Chile. The government must decide what to do. This case also contains information on the development experience of Chile, in particular, on the legacy of General Augusto Pinochet and the economic policies of the "Chicago boys." This case may also be used with the B case, "Chile: A Jungle for the Latin American Tiger (B)" (UV0920), which gives an update on the policies of the Chilean central bank up to 1999 and discusses the debate on the economic consequences of the policies. A teaching note (UV0664) is available. An abridged version of this case exists: "Chile: A Jungle for the Latin American Tiger (Abridged)" (UV0921). It focuses on the economic problems Chile faced from the early 1990s.

Describes a small consulting business, Business Networks, led by Les Cunningham. The firm's primary product was the establishment of groups or "networks" of similar businesses and the facilitation of each network's biannual meetings. Owners of individual firms, called networkers, met to tackle each other's business problems and share solutions. The networks were formed of like-sized remodeling contractors that specialized in similar lines of business. Provides a description of one biannual meeting and perspective from network members on the pros and cons of the process of performance improvement.

Describes how a hotel and leisure company provides high-end service through its distinctive hotels and trains. Provides an opportunity to learn about the company's unusual quality practices and puts into doubt the unquestioned use of well-known practices, such as managing for consistency, offering incentives based on nonfinancial measures, and creating a unified message for a high-end brand. The main dilemma is whether the company should develop a loyalty program across its collection of hotels.

Siebel Systems is one of the fastest growing companies in America. Tom Siebel, the company's founder, has organized the business to accommodate growth and focus on the customer. Innovative information technology systems and clear accountability prove to be essential to this new approach to organization design. For example, a new employee must successfully pass an online test to demonstrate her understanding of Siebel's management systems and practices. This product can be used with the free Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT), available at: hbsp.harvard.edu/jdot

Three years after launching a content-based web site, a nationwide hard goods retailer invested in software to support Internet shopping. The online component was one element in a multiple-channel retailing approach, which also included retail stores, a phone-order service, and an annual catalog. Although the company is the country's most shopped retailer, the online retail segment has not turned a profit. The director of marketing must consider the effect of multiple-channel retailing on the company's profitability.

In the fall of 1999, Mike Moore, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), anticipated that the WTO's talks in Seattle in December 1999 would focus on improving living standards around the world, bettering the environment, providing more resources for health and education, strengthening the global economy, and reducing the risk of future instability and crisis. He characterized the WTO as seeking to advance a new approach to international cooperation based on rules, not power-rules, to help manage the powerful forces of globalization to everyone's benefit, the weak as well as the strong. Instead, the Seattle meeting was sidelined by waves of protests as widely disparate groups voiced strong opposition to the WTO and, more generally, to free trade. Protests focused on the perceived impact of trade on the environment, jobs, human rights, and the balance of power between large economic powers and developing countries. Additionally, the dispute resolution policies of the WTO were placed in the spotlight. The protests gained very widespread exposure and put the WTO representatives on the defensive. As the protests intensified, President Clinton objected to the violent methods used by some protestors but expressed sympathy with their desire to have more openness and accountability for the WTO. After two days of protests, vandalism, and police enforced curfews, the meetings were suspended. This case describes the history of the WTO, the protests at the Seattle talks, the role of the Internet in mobilizing protesters, the WTO's dispute resolution processes, and the implications of the failed talks for the WTO and its opponents.