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The credit boom that preceded the 2007-2009 financial crisis led to several lending practices that exposed banks to large risks. In particular, when the financial crisis unraveled, there were several billion dollars' worth of leveraged buyout (LBO) loans that were meant to be syndicated but-due to full underwriting-had to be funded by the originating banks. The case protagonist is Bennett J. Goodman, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone. Goodman evaluates the opportunity to buy a fraction of the leveraged loan portfolio being offered for sale by Citigroup. This case can be used as a vehicle for discussing details of leveraged financing. In particular, it illustrates the close connection between syndicated-lending-backed leveraged transactions and loan securitization, and provides a context for discussion of factors that led to the leveraged credit boom that ended in 2007. The case also provides in-depth details of the structure of the transaction and its underlying assets, and serves as a means for understanding and valuing alternative investment strategies pursued by private equity firms during the credit-market crisis. As a byproduct, students learn how to use credit default swaps (CDS), a market-based indicator, for valuation.

First-year Columbia Business School student Kristen Peters hoped her summer internship with Taylor Reed (TR) would lead to a job offer in private wealth management. Yet mid-way through the internship, Peters received poor feedback, with TR executives citing her low energy and disregard for the firm's rules by checking her phone during classroom time. Vowing to improve her image, Peters completed extra work and extended her networking efforts. By summer's end, Peters remained unsure whether a job offer would be forthcoming. In this case students examine Peters' performance and TR's culture before discussing strategies for building influence. This two-part case series asks students to identify Peter's goals, detect office politics, and discuss how she handles the company culture. It concludes that jobs often possess both meritocratic and political components.

The MobiChair case describes the story of Lucy Ahn and Josh McKinnon, graduates of Stanford's Graduate School of Business who are also in a relationship, who take on the role of co-CEOs of a power wheelchair company after being offered the position by a mentor who is on the company's board. MobiChair is facing stalled growth and the board hopes to revive the company with new leadership. Though hesitant at first, the couple decides to take on the challenge and soon find themselves faced with a series of interpersonal issues and conflicts that threaten to overwhelm them. From their very first meeting with MobiChair's top three vice presidents, Ahn and McKinnon pick up on red flags that indicate the company operates with a "good enough" culture where 6-hour workdays, a focus on the tactical rather than the strategic, and reluctance to change are all the norm. In the second vignette, McKinnon must deal with an HR manager who defies instituting an employee recognition program McKinnon has requested. On a trip to the company's East Coast office, Ahn and McKinnon are alarmed to find that several top managers are underperforming and need to be replaced, after having assured the West Coast staff that they will not be shutting down any offices of undergoing layoffs. Finally, the co-CEOs are faced with an ultimatum from the controller which forces them to decide whether they can manage without her, or whether they must tolerate her antics until a suitable replacement is found.

Describes a senior management team's strategic decision-making process. The division president faces three options for redesigning the process to address several key concerns. The president has extensive quantitative and qualitative data about the process to guide him as he and the senior team attempt to make improvements.

The Gaylord Division of Americhem, a large chemical company, is in the midst of the first use of a new zero-base budgeting system. The general manager of the division leading the process is experiencing disagreement and conflict among the members of the senior management team. This case describes a difficult meeting. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

In late 2012, the management team of Myomo, a startup which had designed a unique myoelectric arm brace for patients with dysfunctional arms, was deciding which of the three sales models the company had tested to pursue as its sales strategy going forward. Each model had its own unique merits and risks. The team planned to fully examine each strategy to determine how to best get the brace into the hands of those who needed it most, the patients, and identify which one enabled Myomo to grow.

CEO Aaron Levie co-founded Box as a student at USC in 2004. Less than 10 years later, Box had become one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in Silicon Valley, serving more than 180,000 businesses including marquee customers such as Procter and Gamble, Panasonic, and Avaya. Despite this success, Levie was concerned about the future. He and his leadership team would need to overcome significant hurdles to turn Box into one of the next great enterprise software companies. This case explores how Levie planned to evolve Box from online storage to a data platform in the cloud. It follows the company's attempt to shift from collaborative sharing of information to becoming a platform for accessing critical data. Issues covered include: managing competitive threats from large, well-funded companies such as Microsoft and Citrix, delivering enterprise-class solutions with consumer-grade ease-of-use, and maintaining Box's distinctive and fun culture as the company grew and added more disciplined business processes.

Brazil won a WTO trade dispute against the U.S. over U.S. cotton subsidies. Brazil has been authorized to retaliate, not only by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. but also by revoking intellectual property rights protection on various items, including patents for selected U.S. pharmaceutical products and copyright protection for U.S. movies and music. Rather than revoke IPR protection, the Brazilian Ambassador to the WTO, Roberto Azevedo, has decided to offer a deal: the U.S. can make an annual payment to Brazilian cotton farmers. The objective is to embarrass members of the U.S. Congress as they negotiate the U.S. Farm Bill, so that they will drop the cotton subsidies altogether.

Founded in 1997, Kalamandir was established in one of the poorest tribal areas in India to revive tribal dances and arts and generate livelihoods. It was now active in over 114 villages and its activities had helped increase the incomes of over 2,500 households. Despite strong achievements, much more would have to be done to make a substantial improvement in the lives of tribal villagers in Jharkhand, an impoverished region of India. The question was how to scale the activities and induce socio-economic development in a sustainable way. How could livelihood opportunities associated with arts, dance, culture and handicrafts be broadened while strengthening the region's core agricultural income? How could the local leadership pool in villages be expanded and what mechanisms could be introduced to minimize conflicts or resolve them faster? How could Kalamandir attract dynamic professionals? Which government and private organizations did it have to develop stronger relationships with in order to access the financial resources it needed to grow?

Paul Schroder had recently celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday and was beginning to feel his age. While he recognized that there were many good years ahead, he also realized that it was not too early to begin to think seriously about his retirement and his estate. For years, he had been encouraged to make a careful estate plan, but he always put it off, thinking that he would take care of it at a later time. Now was that later time. This case describes a hypothetical investor faced with the challenges of concentrated wealth, intergenerational transfers, special needs, offspring receiving unearned wealth, philanthropic decisions, and providing for post-career life.

The economic policies advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, dubbed Abenomics, have weakened the yen and given new life to Japan's stock market. There are three components of Abenomics: monetary easing, fiscal spending, and growth strategies. The economy-boosting effects of Abenomics and the Bank of Japan's (BOJ's) bold monetary easing policy are stirring up considerable global interest in Japan. Of the three components of Abenomics, monetary easing and fiscal spending are unlikely to inflict much pain on the public, apart from the fact that younger generations will be forced to pay back the debt the government is rapidly incurring. But the third component, growth strategies, can only be effective when addressing regulatory issues that have long been left untouched. What Japan needs most is regulatory and structural reform. These painful, drastic reforms will shuffle the deck for protected businesses. While structural reforms almost always inflict pain on vested interests protected by regulatory walls, creative initiatives by newcomers benefit consumers and help to revitalize the economy.

The chairman of Stag International faced a number of challenges. As the number one table tennis brand in India and one of the top five companies globally, Stag could go after market share, diversify into domestic distribution, do both or just sit tight. The chairman also needed to set the business up for the fourth generation to step in and drive the family-owned business forward. The dilemmas he faced were defining the strategic intent, strategic choices and resourcing for the business as it entered its 90th year of existence as a leading manufacturer and exporter of sports goods in India.

The president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A is a devout Christian who publicly operates his restaurants according to Biblical principles. A recent controversy has surrounded his public opposition to gay marriage. As a result, the company is being accused of discrimination and prejudice. Are the company's deeply rooted Christian values hindering the business?

In mid-2013, as FasterCures celebrated its 10th anniversary as a center of the Milken Institute, Executive Director Margaret Anderson thought about what the organization should do to ensure it had even more impact in its next 10 years. FasterCures was a non-profit "action tank" whose mission was to speed up the process of moving new therapies from discovery to patients in need. Although their annual conference ("Partnering for Cures") to improve how government research was organized was a huge success, Anderson considered refocusing their resources on greater challenges.</p><p>For example, current trends in the US showed that investors were increasingly supporting late stage research with higher probabilities of success while funding for riskier early stage research was drying up. Should FasterCures raise money and direct it toward early stage breakthrough therapies? Another issue was the US clinical trial process system. It's complicated, takes a long time, and is very expensive. Should FasterCures reorganize to better understand this issue and make a high-level push to improve it? Or perhaps FasterCures should look at drug reimbursement decisions. Anderson needed to determine where FasterCures should get fully involved, what it should do, and whether it could make a difference.

CIT's prepackaged bankruptcy marked the first time a major financial institution was able to successfully restructure and emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, challenging conventional views that a financial firm could not survive bankruptcy proceedings as a going concern. A diverse group of private investors that had accumulated a large position in CIT in the period leading up to the restructuring played a central role in the success of this restructuring. The case protagonist is Rajath Shourie, Managing Director at Oaktree Capital Management. Shourie evaluates the opportunity to extend a $3 billion rescue credit facility to CIT, together with five other large creditors of the struggling bank. The decision takes place just one day after CIT was denied access to the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TLGP). This case provides a platform for discussing what constitutes a good attractive distressed target. (In parallel, students can gain in-depth insight into alternative financing models of corporate lenders, including banks and finance companies.) The second major component of the case concerns distressed debt investment strategies, and provides an illustration of turning an investment in public debt into a position of control over CIT's management and the restructuring process.

Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of the Greek yogurt company Chobani, Inc., was reflecting on what explained his young company's meteoric rise. The company held over half of the U.S. Greek yogurt market, and nearly 20% of the total yogurt market. The company's innovative approach to product design, sales, marketing, and communication had made its yogurt a hit with consumers, and its entrepreneurial and innovative culture made it popular with its employees. But by 2012, major food companies, such as General Mills and Groupe Danone among others, were beginning to aggressively promote their Greek yogurt. In addition, Chobani was rolling out innovative new products, and had to determine how to enter new markets. At the same time, Ulukaya was also focused on preserving the company's unique culture and approach to work as it grew.

Inc. Magazine's "coolest small company in America," Zingerman's Community of Businesses (ZCoB), is an exemplar positive organization known for its culture and award-winning food. This case covers the ZCoB's decision in 2013 to migrate toward broad-based employee ownership and the iterative, inclusive process by which Zingerman's Partners Group researched and crafted a new ownership design for the ZCoB. Should they use an ESOP, equity compensation, become a cooperative, or create their own model? As students learn about Zingerman's culture (e.g., its progressive views on sustainability, commitment to open book finance, decision-making by consensus) and evaluate which model might be the best match, they grapple with questions that are top-of-mind for the partners: Who will own the ZCoB, and how will it be run when the founders (who own 30-67% of each Zingerman's business) are no longer living? How can it foster a positive, thriving workforce that is the driving force behind a sustainable busi

The Brooklyn Warehouse, a popular restaurant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is cramped for space because of its popularity within its neighbourhood and as a tourist destination in the city. The restaurant is a private company with two shareholders, one of whom is not involved in operations. Because of the economic downturn, the risky nature of the business and the fact that it has been open only four years, the owners are having trouble securing financing for their expansion plans from their bank and other conventional lenders. However, while negotiating a renewal of their lease in late 2011, their landlord offered to pay for half the cost of building a patio to increase the size of the restaurant. To raise the other half, the owners turn to crowdfunding as a method of raising capital through social media by tapping into their community of friends, family and loyal customers. In return for their donation, which may vary from $100 to $2,500, sponsors are offered various packages, including free meals, a company T-shirt and their name listed on a wall of honour. However, little is known about the appropriate accounting or tax treatment for money raised in this manner. The owners had heard horror stories about businesses that used innovative ideas to raise funds only to have fines and penalties levied by government agencies for income tax and sales tax or even by the Securities Commission for improper accounting. The owners turn to their accountant for advice.

The founder of ServiceForce, a company that provides repair and maintenance for motorized two-wheel vehicles in India, has a dilemma about whether he should sell the rights of his franchisee business, join hands with a venture capitalist, borrow money for capacity building or see the business grow through franchising. The start-up was initiated with his own money and family investment. A mere 18 months has shown great success with two service stations, a mobile workshop to service rural and industrial clients and a system of card packages that allow customers to pre-pay for a range of services. The company is a recognized brand for customer satisfaction and quality workmanship, and the employees are happy and contribute to the company well-being by participating in customer promotion schemes. However, competition from both vehicle manufacturers' service stations and unorganized garages is growing in tandem with the skyrocketing sales of two-wheel vehicles, especially to the younger demographic. In order to grow, the company is at a crossroads: should it borrow money to ramp up the growth of the business through new capacity building or invest in more franchises? Should the owner accept the offer to buy the franchise rights from him outright or the offer from a venture capitalist, which will result in losing some control?

In early May 2013, Abercrombie & Fitch, a high-end clothing retailer in the United States, faced a loss of consumer confidence in its brand after quotes made by its CEO in an interview seven years earlier resurfaced. His remarks fostered the perception that the company was prejudiced against overweight people. In response, angry consumers released a YouTube video entitled #FitchTheHomeless urging people to donate their Abercrombie & Fitch clothing to homeless individuals. This video went viral and inspired negative feedback towards the company from both social media networks and mainstream media outlets. Abercrombie & Fitch's first response came 12 days later with a second apology issued the following week. Nonetheless, the controversy continued, and by June, Forbes announced that the company's BrandIndex Impression was at an all year low. How can Abercrombie & Fitch reverse the negative feedback and regain its consumers' loyalty? You might also like: Abercrombie and Fitch, Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, Domino's Pizza