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In December 2023, Nippon Steel Corporation, Japan’s largest steel production company, announced plans to acquire United States Steel Corporation (U. S. Steel) for US$14.1 billion. Just four years earlier, the company experienced a ¥430 billion deficit for its 2019 fiscal year. After the appointment of a new president in 2019, however, Nippon Steel successfully achieved a V-shaped recovery, rescuing it from the verge of bankruptcy. Immediately after the recovery, the president was already aiming for further global expansion. The proposed acquisition—the attempt of a Japanese steelmaker to acquire an iconic 123-year-old American steelmaker— drew immediate attention from various US sectors and stirred emotion among key stakeholders. But for Nippon Steel, was now the right time, financially speaking, to invest as much as US$14.1 billion in an acquisition? As domestic demand for steel was decreasing due to Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population, Nippon Steel needed to expand its business operations globally before it was too late.

BoAt Lifestyle (boAt), a digital-first consumer products company founded in New Delhi, India, by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta in 2014, had launched its first products (wired earphones and headphones) two years after a thorough market study. Over time, the company had entered various high-growth consumer lifestyle–focused product categories, offering its products online at affordable prices. It then attempted to move into the offline market, adopting an omnichannel strategy to engage with a larger customer base and increase its profitability. Despite tough competition from similar brands, it managed to build a reputation among its customers. However, customers and investors were less than happy with its strategy to procure most of its products from China and questioned the high valuation in its initial public offering. To add to the company’s woes, sales its own online and offline channels were not satisfactory. At the end of January 2022, the company was facing an important question: What should boAt do to maintain its growth momentum, appease investor’s patriotic sentiments, and expand sales from its own channels? Which of these challenges should be its priority in the short-run?

This case focuses on the efforts of Bavarian Nordic A/S, a Danish pharmaceutical company, to create a new COVID-19 vaccine. Their vaccine is based on a newer technology and has the potential to provide longer-lasting protection than the currently dominant BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. However, the project also faces obstacles related to uncertainty of vaccine efficacy, financing, product positioning, distribution, and access to production infrastructure. Indeed, given the head start of the incumbents’ vaccines, the dominance in this business of large pharmaceutical companies, and the multitude of other COVID-19 vaccines, some wonder whether the company should be going down this path at all.

In May 2022, BharatPe, a startup,announced a revamp of its governance framework to address any potential risks associated with suspicious transactions in response to a prolonged dispute with its Co-founder and former Managing Director (MD), Ashneer Grover. The company, in December 2022, filed a civil case at the Delhi High Court, and a criminal complaint with the Economic Offenses Wing alleging misappropriation of funds, embezzlement, and other misconduct. As the controversy unfolded, BharatPe's board, primarily comprised of multinational venture capital funds, came under scrutiny, with governance experts questioning their responsibilities and level of accountability. Did the board allow governance issues to persist for an extended period?

The case centres on the pricing and business model challenges facing Peloton Interactive Inc.’s new CEO, Barry McCarthy. With the decline in demand post-pandemic, McCarthy must make pricing and product decisions that balance revenue, profitability, and changing consumer dynamics. The case prompts students to assess McCarthy's options through a behavioural lens, considering the importance of behavioural biases in consumer decision-making and the alignment of the business model and marketing efforts with the target consumer’s decision-making process.

In the spring of 2019, Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, was in the process of developing New Zealand’s first-ever Wellbeing Budget. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, had spoken publicly about her vision to rethink how the government identified and set its priorities. Ardern was poised to push against a decades-old practice of using a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for the well-being of its citizens. Consequently, Robertson was tasked with developing a new budget that addressed growing concerns about the need for more holistic well-being metrics. What nuances of life in the modern world did GDP miss? What would it mean for New Zealand to place less emphasis on GDP when making policy decisions? What should be measured and included in the Wellbeing Budget in place of GDP?

An investment proposal reached the offices of Brookfield Renewable Partners (BRP) that outlined an opportunity for BRP to invest $300 million in Entropy Inc., a carbon capture and storage (CCS) company based in Calgary, Alberta. A subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, BRP specialized in clean power investments and invested with clear environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and company culture principles. As the investment team reviewed the materials, two key questions were at the top of mind. First, did Entropy’s business model align with BRP’s ESG investment criteria? Second, would the investment generate sufficient financial returns, and how would changes to Canada’s carbon pricing regulation impact the viability of CCS?

In October 2022, Licious, the market leader in India’s meat industry, launched its new brand UnCrave in the plant-based meat market segment. The launch was aligned with the company’s portfolio diversification strategy, leveraging its strong core brand equity. Unlike typical plant-meat brands that sold to vegan and vegetarian customers, Licious wanted to offer UnCrave to its core meat-consuming customers as an occasional alternative to meat options. However, several new competitors soon entered the market, while some people questioned the health benefits of plant-based meat. Was it a mistake for Licious to enter the plant-based industry at a time when a sizable portion of the organized meat business was still unexplored. Was the consumer segment Licious had targeted the right choice? Was it a good decision to increase the company’s product mix by including plant-based meat?

By 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Santa Clara, California, had been successfully providing financial services to venture capitalists and private equity firms for 40 years. The bank, which catered to clients from the innovation and technology sectors, ran into problems and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on March 10, 2023, becoming the second largest US bank to fail after Washington Mutual collapsed in 2008. The US Federal Reserve System (FRS), while being criticized for having lax standards that contributed to the catastrophe, maintained that it had provided several warnings. The United States Senate Banking Committee planned to organize a formal congressional hearing to investigate the nature of SVB’s failures and flaws and to question the FRS and evaluate the regulator’s response to the same. Everyone involved was shocked by the collapse of a large bank like SVB. Was it an erroneous business model that concentrated on sector-specific clients that had led to SVB’s downfall? Or was the failure due to lax banking rules? Could a poor regulatory environment be held responsible? Another possibility was that SVB’s weak risk management oversights and controls could be blamed. What could SVB have done to avoid the disaster? What lessons could the banking sector learn to avoid such collapses in the future?

Arconic Inc. was an international aluminum parts manufacturing and lightweight composite engineering conglomerate. In early 2019, it was set to be sold to Apollo Global Management Inc., a premier private equity firm; however, the deal fell apart due to a dispute over the valuation of pension obligations. The board of Arconic Inc. still demanded structural changes to maximize shareholder value, and in February 2020, the company engaged Bulge Bracket Bank (Bulge Bracket) to explore other options. The managing director of Bulge Bracket saw that there was a case to be made for spinning off Arconic Inc.’s Global Rolled Products division as a new company, to be called Arconic Corporation. He assigned a promising second-year analyst the task of conducting a comparable companies analysis to determine a fair valuation for Arconic Corporation. By drawing up a list of other companies in the materials industry and conducting a qualitative and quantitative analysis on them to identify comparable companies, the analyst was able to determine a reasonable implied valuation range ahead of the stock market listing of the spun-off company on April 1, 2020.

Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), a leading global travel agency based in Australia, faced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Known for its extensive network of physical stores and diverse travel services, FCTG experienced severe disruptions due to global travel restrictions and reduced demand. In response, it implemented a strategic transformation, focusing on digital enhancement, cost reduction, and securing additional liquidity. The company streamlined its operations, invested in technology, and formed strategic partnerships to adapt to evolving consumer behaviours. By diversifying its service offerings and making strategic acquisitions, FCTG positioned itself for recovery and growth in the post-pandemic travel industry. However, as international and domestic travel began to recover after 2023, new challenges emerged in the form of persistent inflation and rising living costs. FCTG now faced the question of how to maintain its competitive edge and expand its business while navigating these economic pressures, prompting a re-evaluation of its strategies for sustainable growth amid a rapidly changing market landscape.

Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) faced a significant public relations challenge following a February 5, 2021, social media post from a Canadian cookbook author questioning if others were also experiencing hard butter that would not soften at room temperature. Very quickly, the post received hundreds of replies in the affirmative, prompting a #Buttergate hashtag that soon spilled into mainstream national and international media coverage. The “Buttergate” controversy grew when it was speculated that the cause of the hard butter was due to the addition of palm oil to cow’s feed, with some experts highlighting the negative environmental and health impacts of palm oil. As the lobbying and promotional organization representing Canadian dairy farmers, DFC held a decades-long reputation for quality and transparency with Canadian consumers. Buttergate called this reputation into question, prompting the chief executive officer of DFC, Jacques Lefebvre, to issues a series of statements as the organization navigated the controversy, ultimately forming an expert working group to further investigate the issues that had been raised by consumers and in media reports. While everyone awaited the working group’s final report, what did DFC need to do to rebuild consumer trust in the quality of its product?

In October 2022, the chair of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. was negotiating a sponsorship partnership worth AU$15 million with Netball Australia, which was $7 million in debt. Netball Australia had just announced that Donnell Wallam would join the national team as the third ever Indigenous Australian player on the Diamonds team. However, in 1984, the founder of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. had stated on national television, “I would dope the water up so that they [Indigenous Australians] were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.” This made the proposed partnership particularly controversial. Wallam and other players raised concerns about the proposed sponsor, considering the founder’s racist statement. In addition, some players wondered publicly if taking money from a fossil fuel mining organization would be consistent with the association’s environmental values. The sponsorship deal raised a considerable amount of media and public attention. Wallam stated she was only interested in playing netball at the elite level to make her Indigenous community proud, but some observers were accusing her of putting the critical $15 million sponsorship deal at risk. What would be the best way forward for the partnership between Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. and Netball Australia?

<div style="font-size: 0.94em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">The December 2022 holiday season was anticipated to mark the first “post-COVID” holiday. However, an unusually severe storm hit at the end of December, causing widespread flight cancellations. Most airlines recovered within a day or two, but Southwest Airlines Co. was disproportionately affected. By December 28, 2022, the airline had cancelled 59 per cent of its flights, compared to an average of 1–2 per cent for other airlines. This led to a total of 16,700 cancellations between December 21 and December 31. The crisis was exacerbated by Southwest Airlines Co.’s outdated crew management software, insufficient ground crews, and its unique point-to-point route network. Unlike hub-and-spoke networks, which concentrated resources at major hubs. Southwest’s point-to-point system offered more non-stop flights but lacked flexibility in crisis response. In the aftermath of the crisis, Southwest was grappling with various critical questions. Would investments in new technology suffice? Which technological advances would make the best investments? With obvious structural deficiencies in place, should the airline consider restructuring? How should Southwest navigate the aftermath of the December 2022 crisis to ensure resilience and sustainability?

In January 2024, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc. (Ben & Jerry’s), a subsidiary of Unilever, was facing several critical decisions. It had been over a year since the company had been sued by its independent board about the company’s decision to sell its Israeli business to a long-time licensee in that country. That situation was resolved with the court ruling against the independent board. However, guiding principles had to be developed to prepare for similar situations in the future. Specifically, the Ben & Jerry’s management team had to work with its independent board to help avoid such incidents from reoccurring. Ben & Jerry’s also had to achieve a balance among the perspectives and demands from various stakeholders, which were sometimes in conflict with each other.

In May 2022, India’s retail inflation rate rose above the upper limit of the target range set by the Reserve Bank of India in 2015, to reach 7.79 per cent. In recent years, India’s retail inflation rate had been successfully kept within the target range of 2–6 per cent as the economy grew steadily. Everything changed in March 2020, however, when the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy of all countries around the world. In February 2022, two years after the outbreak of the pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine, which further disrupted the global supply chains. As a result, all major economies had to closely manage their monetary policies with contractionary measures and use policy rates to contain inflation. Eventually, by March 2023, the inflation rate in India dropped to 5.66 per cent, within the target range. The Reserve Bank of India’s governor had paused the rate hike in April after noticing that high interest rates were adversely affecting investments and growth prospects in the Indian economy. He knew that he had to continue using contractionary monetary policies but could not lower the policy repo rate, when inflation across major economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom were showing no signs of calming. He could choose to increase or keep the repo rate unchanged. Alternatively, he could choose a contractionary measure such as quantitative tightening.

In 2022, Michael Steiner, Porsche's Executive Board Member for Research and Development, confronted a pivotal decision as the company aimed to shift over 80 per cent of new vehicle sales to full-electric models by 2030. In response to the global drive for sustainability, Porsche contemplated an innovative strategy: the eFuels concept, involving the production of synthetic fuels with near-carbon-neutral potential. This presented a solution to challenges such as market competition, technological changes, and varied global governmental impacts. However, Porsche grappled with the dilemma of embracing eFuels or focusing solely on electric vehicles, recognizing the decision's profound impact on its industry position. The company was faced with the choice of becoming a fuel provider, controlling the entire value chain, or collaborating with existing producers to leverage expertise and mitigate risks. The decision required careful consideration of long-term implications, with high stakes shaping Porsche's trajectory for years to come. Balancing electric engine development and the pursuit of eFuels, the company sought to strike a delicate equilibrium in navigating the complex landscape of sustainable mobility and emerging technologies.

Shein, a rapidly growing international e-commerce giant based in China, strategically positioned itself as a dominant player in the fast fashion industry by catering to Gen Z customers with stylish and affordable offerings. The brand benefitted from a forward-thinking digital business model that harnessed big data analysis and social media marketing, ensuring deep consumer insights and accurate market demand predictions. Moreover, its seamless integration with supplier networks bolstered its supply chain agility and enabled it to enhance customer experiences through tailored product recommendations. Despite its success, Shein faced scrutiny for labour exploitation, design infringement, and broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges inherent to the fast-fashion industry. Under pressure from investors and targeting a potential public listing, Shein embarked on an ethical transformation, aligning with international labour conventions and local regulations to improve its ESG standing. This case underscored Shein’s complex challenge as it strived to harmonize sustainability with commercial profitability. It also introduced the ESG strategies Shein had adopted until then. The crucial question remained: How could Shein leverage its digital innovations to transform into a sustainable and ethical global operator? Particularly within the context of Sino-US tensions, what strategies should the company employ to secure a higher valuation and establish itself as a responsible industry player while pursuing a successful initial public offering?

In early 2022, the online sports betting market was opening in Ontario, Canada, and Rush Street Interactive (RSI), an online and offline gaming company based in Chicago and already operating in the gaming space in a number of US states and the country of Colombia, had to decide about its next move. RSI had so far focused its growth strategy on being a first mover in new markets, and several of its gaming competitors had already indicated their intentions to enter the newly opened online casinos and online sports betting market in Ontario. Should RSI take the opportunity to enter the Ontario online sports betting market or take advantage of its first-mover advantage in US jurisdictions such as Tennessee, West Virginia, and Massachusetts?

On July 18, 2022, transgender employees of Kochi Metro Rail Limited revealed several sad stories of discrimination, low salary, and inaccessible toilets in the workplace. The publicly owned company based in Kochi, India aimed to be seen as among the most sustainable and connected organizations in the country. In 2017, the company made a conscious effort to hire transgender candidates into primary positions. After hiring 1,000 women and 23 transgender employees as part of its social inclusion initiative, Kochi Metro Rail Limited earned praise from the public as an inclusive workplace. The company soon reached a high of 43 transgender employees, but that number dropped considerably down to nine employees within only five years, after issues and disappointments surfaced among the workforce. The transgender community saw the company’s transgender employee policy as a promotional stunt to gain publicity and public attention. To regain its former status among India’s top companies for social inclusion, it was imperative for Kochi Metro Rail Limited to quickly find a way to attract and retain transgender employees.