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This case focuses on the Blackstone credit arm, GSO Capital as it evaluated a proposal for an equity investment into the distressed company, Crosstex Energy L.P., an integrated midstream energy company, that was hit hard by declining natural gas prices during the 2008 global financial crisis. At the time, Crosstex was burdened by significant bank debt in the form of a secured revolving credit line. After some initial restructuring, Crosstex was forced to stop quarterly dividend payments as part of a new covenant structure. In order to resume dividend payments, Crosstex needed to reduce its leverage ratio in accordance with its existing covenants. As part of the steps undertaken toward recovery, Crosstex management decided to find a preferred equity investor, ahead of a larger plan to raise up to $700 million in market debt. This case provides a setting for discussing a so-called "rescue financing" transaction which is a strategy within "direct lending" segment of the private debt space. It can also be used as a vehicle for discussing three core debt alternatives: (i) bank debt; (ii) public bonds, and (iii) private debt

13th Floor-Adler, a partnership of 13th Floor Investments and Adler Group, was compiling a response to a Miami-Dade County Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP's prize was the opportunity to develop a 7.5+/- acre parking lot, adjacent to a heavy-rail rapid transit station, into a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in Miami. To win, 13th Floor-Adler, had to submit a proposal that was the "highest and best use" for the land, catered to the County's demands for workforce housing, provided a market return for investors and compensated the County for the use of the land. Throughout its history, Miami has been subject to a number of real estate booms and busts. Intricate expertise of Miami's demand drivers were necessary in order to succeed. Arnaud Karsenti (MBA 2006), founder and Principal at 13th Floor Investments (13th Fl), with over $1B worth of completed transactions in the South Florida market, had this well of expertise. Furthermore, the partnership with the Adler Group, headed by Michael M. Adler, provided additional credibility for the proposal due to their 50+ years' experience in Miami. At "Link @ Douglas," can Karsenti and his team be "placemakers" creating a true live, work, and play environment, deliver market returns to investors and create a winning proposal that caters to the demands of the Miami-Dade County officials?

Nickol Hackett, chief investment officer of the Cook County Pension Fund, is responsible for investing the fund's $9 billion worth of assets on behalf of the employees of Cook County, Illinois. Like many other defined-benefit pensions at the time, the Cook County pension faces a funding shortfall, meaning that the value of its assets is below the value of its future obligations to retirees. Hackett can invest in fixed income securities, public equities, and alternative assets such as hedge funds, real estate, or private equity. What are the costs and benefits of each asset class? Should the funding status of the pension impact the asset allocation process? How should Hackett invest in order to grow the value of the fund's assets and secure the retirement benefits for thousands of Cook County's employees?

In the fall of 2016, the Crimson, Harvard's undergraduate newspaper, broke a story revealing that the 2012 Harvard Men's Soccer team had produced a sexually explicit "scouting report" about the Women's Soccer team. The story generated national headlines and thrust gender issues, and the University, into the media spotlight. In the following months, the breadth of this type of practice was revealed; the "scouting reports" had been an annual tradition of the Men's Soccer team, and the Cross Country team admitted to similar practices. This case follows the decision-making of Harvard administrators as they deal with the discovery of the scouting report. In addition to exploring leadership through crisis, the case challenges readers to explore the boundaries of appropriateness in how we think and talk about interpersonal attraction.

Doing a breakeven analysis for Carlsbad Home Care helped Director Louise Tucker better understand how many more visits she needed to eliminate her deficit. However, she wasn't sure that there was really demand in the community for more nursing, physical therapy or social service visits to allow her to increase visit volume. She also knew that negotiating a higher per visit price from their affiliated HMO was highly unlikely. If increasing volume and raising the price for visits were not feasible, she wondered what else she should be thinking about. She decided she should explore alternatives that would look at her specific programs, staffing approaches, and general expenses. In discussions with her controller, she arrived at five alternatives for consideration.

In December 2016, the debt-stricken Greek government announced the distribution of a sizeable "Christmas gift" to its low-income pensioners, a one-time bonus that would cost the government €617 million. This cost was in addition to suspending increases in the value-added tax on some Greek islands. These plans were in clear violation of the terms of a bailout provided to Greece by Eurozone nations in 2015, which required Greece to implement austerity measures and achieve specific fiscal targets. What was the reason for Greece's economic troubles and why did Greece's debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio climb to its current three-digit figure? Faced with an imminent exit from the Eurozone, how could the country's government solve Greece's longstanding fiscal problems?

In November 2014, a senior administrative service officer at Madhya Pradesh State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited was faced with the problem of determining how to best allocate food grain according to location demands. She needed to choose the best delivery routes and provide a cost-effective means of meeting demands for food grain from "fair-price shops." How should she approach this problem? How should she manage any changes that she makes in the distribution plans?

Rachio, a small Denver-based company, developed and sold a disruptive technology that digitized home sprinkler systems. Rachio's "Smart Sprinkler Controller" enabled homeowners to reduce water usage by up to 50 percent by using detailed weather reports to auto-adjust watering. Homeowners could also easily control their irrigation systems from their smartphones through the Rachio app. Rachio had seen strong early adoption, but in 2018 the percentage of homes with smart sprinkler controllers was still quite small. Although the Internet of Things (IoT) market was growing rapidly, the market was still relatively new and expensive. Rachio was similar to many other IoT companies in that the majority of the value of the product was in the software-but the revenue came from one-time sales of a piece of hardware, which Rachio sold as a premium product. Rachio's large incumbent competitors were a step behind Rachio in smart controllers, but they were starting to copy Rachio's product, feature for feature. To stay ahead of the competition and continue to grow, Rachio needed to convert more homeowners into the B2C channel or move to extend its early B2C wins into B2B markets. In B2B markets, professional landscapers chose the controller type and brand for homeowners.

Jennifer McDougall is considering investing in mutual funds for the first time, and has narrowed her options down to three: one that is domiciled in Germany, and two that are domiciled in Luxembourg. As a cautious and risk-averse investor, Jennifer has done extensive research on the three funds, and has come across a curious fact: the beta of the German fund is surprisingly low. After speaking to her financial planner, she learns there is no legal requirement in Germany for mutual funds to compute net asset values at a particular time of the day. If the German fund is closing its books in the middle of the day and its net asset values reflect its midday holdings, rather than end-of-day holdings, this could explain the low beta. Thus, the German fund might appear less risky, without actually being so. Jennifer needed to get a clearer picture of what was going on before making her decision. Using the data provided with the case, students will determine the closing time of the three funds and how that affects the beta of each. Then they must make a recommendation about which fund would be the best investment for Jennifer.

An analyst's The manager at a local investment firm had been reading through a recent report regarding MGM Resorts International when he noticed a drop in the company's bad debt expense estimate for 2016. He had asked an analyst at the firm to investigate. The manager knew a decrease like this could indicate an improvement in collectability from customers, but he also knew the expense was subject to estimates from management. He needed to know whether to interpret the decline as a good sign or not. This case is intended for use in an introductory financial accounting course to demonstrate the impact of accounts receivable on financial statements.

In the business environment surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, a new field within investing emerged to address the shortcomings of a "profit-only" mission of business. The nascent impact investing industry sought to create positive impact beyond financial returns. Putting this idyllic-sounding idea into practice demanded that institutions interested in this line of work consider what social impact means, how to assess it, how returns in impact investments would differ from traditional investments, and where to invest capital. Four students at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business realized the flawed structure of the financial system and wanted to see how they and their university could play a role in the impact investing industry. Collaborating with faculty and industry professionals, the students conceived the idea of a student-run venture capital fund that would invest in companies for both financial and social returns. Social Venture Fund was the first of any such organization on any campus. Before the students could even make an investment, however, they had to decide on the nature of their organization. The students wrestled with four questions at the same time as the overall impact investing industry was struggling with the identical questions: How would they define impact? What would their investment thesis be? How would they measure impact? In which sectors and geographies would they invest?

For 20 years, TTTech had honed its innovative suite of technology solutions, developing cutting-edge products for customers such as Audi, General Electric, Cisco, Boeing, Airbus, and HYDAC International. Yet the two cofounders were perhaps even more excited by a confluence of market and technology trends in TTTech's favor-trends that aligned perfectly with TTTech's products and capabilities. One of the most pronounced tailwinds was the race towards fully autonomous vehicles. Within the industry, there was growing consensus that cars would become fully autonomous in the next decade or two. Given the complexity associated with developing the networks and electronic systems that would enable autonomous vehicles, manufacturers looked to companies like TTTech to provide the underlying technology needed to turn this vision into a reality. Yet the trend towards increasingly complex electronic systems was not restricted to the automotive industry. Across every industry, physical devices, machines, vehicles, and buildings were becoming embedded with electronics that allowed for the collection and exchange of data, all of which enhanced automation. Against this backdrop, Kopetz and Poledna believed that TTTech could reach more than $200 million in revenue by 2020. Yet achieving this success would not be without its challenges. TTTech would have to align itself with the right strategic and financial partners, continue to hire top managerial talent, and compete in multiple industries, each of which had its own set of unique regulations and standards. TTTech was in a strong position to achieve explosive growth, yet Kopetz and Poledna would have to navigate several hurdles in order to realize that growth.

Dr. William Carson, an African-American psychiatrist who grew up in South Carolina. He had a thriving career in academic medicine as a professor and he also treated patients. After a decade in academic medicine he moved into the pharmaceutical industry where he ran drug trials. As the Group Director of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Carson worked on the drug Aripiprazole, an antipsychotic drug that is more famously known as Abilify. Abilify had been developed by Otsuka, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, and it was being co-marketed in the United States by Otsuka and Bristol Myers-Squibb. After a series of "Appleby's" conversations held during dinner meetings with a colleague from Otsuka at Appleby's restaurant, Carson was invited to join Otsuka's fledgling Princeton, N.J., office. Carson was then asked to take on the considerable task of running clinical trials for Abilify in Japan. The project would require a deft cultural touch as well as a plan for how to run the trials. Should the trials be run in-house or outsourced? Should Carson hire employees who might eventually be laid off - an unpopular option in Japan - or could he find a company with enough cultural sensitivity to run the trials in Asia? Carson would have to rely on his intrapreneurial skills to find the answers.

The strong, public advocacy of a highly successful African American CEO has the potential to negatively impact his company. The CEO is deciding if he should listen to the advice of others who are urging him to "tone it down".

Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China's largest social networking service provider with several of the largest social networking applications in the world, and China's favorite Internet portal. It was challenging Alibaba's Alipay as the leader in online payments systems, and it had established strategic relationships with many service providers to help exploit new opportunities in online-to-offline (O2O) services and leverage its huge user base in e-commerce and search. However, there was no room for complacency. Competition from the other big local Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba was fierce, and there were always thousands of start-ups looking to enter the sector. Founder and CEO Ma Huateng ("Pony" Ma) remarked, "In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China-execution is."

In 2016, the owner of a cow-calf operation must decide what the appropriate weight for cows in their herd is. For decades, the national trend has been for cow weights to increase because they produce larger calves, but evidence indicates that cow weights may have reached the point where the cost of maintaining a larger cow has become greater than the return from producing a larger calf. Analyzing this issue introduces marginal principles from economics. Formerly "Old Mule Farms," product no. 9B10B004.

Eatigo is a restaurant reservation application (app) founded in 2013 which offered an alternative way of connecting diners to restaurants. The aim was to improve restaurants' profitability by filling up empty restaurant seats during off-peak hours, by offering time-based discounts ranging from 10 to 50 percent. The market for restaurant reservation apps showed potential but there were already entrenched players. With dogged determination to develop a unique value proposition and careful crafting of its business model, the founders managed to shape diners' behaviour and disrupt the modus operandi of the industry to become a leading restaurant reservation app with presence in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines. As business gained traction, the founders needed funding to sustain growth. They explored funding options available to small-medium enterprises in Singapore and Bangkok - loan from credit card and banks, government grants, and investment from venture capital companies. There were pros and cons. The size and cost of funding were important considerations. Whilst meeting investors' demands was necessary to secure funding, it may lead to excessive dilution of owner's control. There was also the question on the correct valuation of Eatigo. Which type of funding should the founders choose?

The RoboTech case describes the challenges facing the CEO of a small, Singapore-based industrial robotics company that decides to diversify away from its core industrial robot business by leveraging its expertise into the medical-devices industry. It launches an innovative product (a specialized surgical robot) in an unfamiliar market segment (spinal surgery) and decides to enter the unfamiliar, distant U.S. healthcare market, which is characterized by rapid technological change and intense competition with large, established competitors. RoboTech's initial struggles with maintaining product supply and customer support are also complicated by regulatory pressures and shifting reimbursement rates. The case illustrates the strategic and organizational pressures that result from facing numerous unanticipated pressures in a company that lacks the resources, capabilities, and management experience to deal with them. Although the case was developed for courses in international management/international business, it is also well suited to courses in strategy, technology management, and general management.