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California telecommunications company Wireworld is considering an acquisition of Nusantara Communications, a subsidiary of Indonesian conglomerate Bakrie & Brothers. Nusantara had invested $50 million in developing the advanced rural telephone system, which had the potential to provide much-needed telecommunications services to the mostly rural Indonesian population. If if were exported, the worldwide market for this product in the next five years was projected to be in the billions. Should Wireworld acquire this small company halfway around the world? Was it prepared to enter the Indonesian marketplace and beyond?

Spiegel Online (www.spiegel.de) is the leading news Web site in Germany. The site was first designed to accompany Der Spiegel, one of Europe's largest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, which has a weekly circulation of around one million. The site's content is produced by a team of more than fifty journalists writing in several categories: politics, business, networld, panorama, arts and entertainment, science, university, school, sports, travel, weather, and automobiles. The original content is complemented by articles purchased from news agencies and selected articles from the print edition. Spiegel-Verlag is a major contributor to the Hamburg Media School, which offers professional master's degree programs in Media Management (MBA), film, and journalism. In their second year, MBA students typically engage in consulting projects with major media companies. In a recent assignment, Spiegel Online posed two questions to the MBA team: are there any chances for an economically successful entry into the market for interactive classifieds? And if so, what should the business model look like in detail? A student team analyzed markets for classified ads and found one market segment that appeared to be particularly promising: the market for art objects. During the development of a business plan for a new venture in this market it became apparent that there is much uncertainty about the key input parameters to the business plan. As a result, it is very difficult to assess the viability of the business idea. How can the team properly account for the uncertain input parameters? What is the impact of this uncertainty on the bottom line? Will a Web site for art objects earn or lose money? How can the team communicate this uncertainty to a group of high-level decision makers who want a simple "go or no-go" recommendation?

The case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2008 of a family-owned contract manufacturing company into a publicly traded, US$400 million global firm. The son of the founder, Bernie Auyung, assumed the CEO position with the company during this period and has worked with his father to build a broader, professional management team. In the process the company has applied a range of leading-edge innovation management and strategy tools that put it far ahead of most Chinese peer companies. Computime provides an exceptional model for other companies in developing countries looking to evolve from a low-cost competitor into a global leading company with its own technologies and brands. Students are asked to assume Bernie's role and suggest the path forward. The teaching note describes what the team actually did, and addresses the questions raised at the end of the case.

The financial success of dairy farms depends critically on the price of their main output, milk. Large volatility in the price of milk poses a considerable business risk to dairy farms. This is particularly true for family-run dairy farms. The question then arises: how can a farm owner hedge the milk price risk? The standard approach to establish a price floor for a commodity such as milk is to purchase put options on commodity futures. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, farmers can buy put options on the price of a variety of milk products. However, the price a farm receives for its milk depends on many factors and is unique to the farm. Thus, a farmer cannot directly buy put options on the price he receives for the milk his farm produces. Instead the farmer needs to determine which of the options available for trade at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange offer the best hedge for his own milk price. The assignment in this case is to examine historical data on several prices of milk products and the milk price received by a family-run dairy farm in California. Students need to find the price that is most closely correlated to the farm's milk price and to then choose options with the appropriate strike price that serve as the best hedge for the farm's price risk.

Two Hawaiian airlines' cooperative environment is disrupted by the entry of a third competitor, Mesa Airways. The price war leads to fares as low as $0 and causes more than $100 million in losses in the first year with no end in sight. Industry risk factors for price competition were reduced in 2001 when the government granted a one-year reprieve from anti-trust laws, but increased dramatically after Mesa's announced entry.

Sara Lee Corporation's acquisition binge in the 1980s and 1990s left the company with a portfolio of vastly different businesses operating independently of one another. It had experienced rapid top-line growth, but at the same time cash flows had declined. Sara Lee ignored both internal and external warning signs until a major transformation plan became necessary. This case examines the company's multiple turnaround attempts. The learning objective of the case is to analyze "early stage" turnaround efforts by examining how the company found itself in decline, evaluating its attempts to improve its performance, and assessing the turnaround plan.

Senior managers in Parmalat SpA's U.S. subsidiary (Parmalat USA)-many of whom were from the Italian parent company or other Parmalat entities-uprooted, cleaned out their offices, and left as the magnitude of the parent company's fraud became known in late 2003. Parmalat USA had filed for bankruptcy in October 2003. With urgency and desperation, Enrico Bondi, the Extraordinary Commissioner of Parmalat SpA, had contacted the Milan office of AlixPartners, a global restructuring, consulting, and financial advisory firm. Bondi requested AlixPartners' assistance in determining the cash situation at the U.S. subsidiary and helping lead the struggling division, which was now void of senior management. Jim Mesterharm, a managing director in AlixPartners' Chicago office, was asked to lead this initiative as the chief restructuring officer. Parmalat SpA, often referred to as the Enron of Italy, was a trophy turnaround assignment at the outset for AlixPartners: for them, the worse the economic problem, the better the assignment. Ninety days was enough time for Mesterharm and his team to determine what could be cut off and what discussions were needed with the U.S. vendors, customers, and employees. Mesterharm's team changed the accounting methods from GAAP basis to cash basis. They constructed a 13-week cash flow model. Aggressive efforts were made to delay payables and to accelerate receivables to create cash. The battle to keep Parmalat USA afloat had begun.

In 2005, a wine snob in the critically acclaimed movie Sideways denounced merlot. Subsequently, sales of merlot, including sales for Terlato's Rutherford Hill merlot, declined significantly. Students are asked to evaluate three strategies-rebranding, cutting price, and launching television advertising-that Terlato is considering to reverse this decline. The case should be used with "Student Supplement: Terlato Wines International: Background Note on the U.S. Wine Market and Terlato Wines International," Case #KEL359.

The Biaxin case deals with competition in the mature market for antibiotics designed for use in the treatment of bacterial respiratory infections. The case tells the story of how Pfizer's Zithromax stole the share dominance of an established brand, Abbott's Biaxin. The case deals with the importance in pharma markets of consumer (patient) and channel (physician and insurance payer) insight as well as pharmacological efficacy data.

A major barrier for growth of large multi-business-unit firms is the inability to resource the critical initiatives to win-both in terms of dollars and people. The underpinning of the challenge involves the conflict between resourcing current cash-generating legacy businesses vs. new initiatives which may not, in the short term, produce positive financial results. Most companies do not have a formal portfolio process to deal with this fundamental issue. The Healthcare Solutions business unit of Danaka is a fictional business based on real business experiences. The principle challenge is the need for this business to free up $300 million of current, budgeted R&D projects to fund new, unfunded initiatives to meet its five-year growth objectives. Tools and processes are introduced via interactive spreadsheets that show how to make the tough portfolio decisions on a project-by-project basis.

Freeport-McMoRan's acquisition of Phelps Dodge created the world's largest publicly traded copper company. JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch advised the acquirer and arranged $17.5 billion in debt financing and $1.5 billion in credit facilities. In addition, these two firms underwrote $5 billion in equity capital through simultaneous offerings of Freeport-McMoRan common shares and mandatory convertible preferred shares. These financings created an optimal capital structure for the company that resulted in stronger credit ratings. The activities of the equity capital markets and sales groups at the underwriting firms are explored and the structure and benefits of mandatory convertible preferred shares is explained.

EuroPet S.A. was a multinational company operating gas stations in many European countries. There was a growing propensity for supermarkets to attach gas stations to their retail operations, which was developing into a major threat to EuroPet. As a result, in the mid-1990s, the company began to develop and brand its own convenience stores co-located with its gas stations. However, the company was spending much more on advertising the convenience stores than its competitors did. Management now had to decide if the increase in sales attributed to advertising efforts justified the advertising spend by analyzing the market data from one large metropolitan area: Marseille, France.

An asset management company must replace the manager of its two signature mutual funds, who is about to retire. Two candidates have been short-listed. The management team is divided and cannot decide which of the two candidates would make the better mutual fund manager. The retiring manager presents a linear regression model to examine success factors of mutual fund managers. This linear regression is the starting point for the subsequent analysis.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gonzalez, PACIV's (Puerto Rico) founding CEO is considering expanding PACIV's pharmaceutical manufacturing compliance services company to the U.K. and Europe. He has to decide whether to hire Wayne Snelgrove, and how to define the scope of his responsibilities.

The case describes the challenge faced by the CEO and newly hired Chief Marketing Officer to reposition the Philips brand and drive the organizational changes to support the new vision. Central to the version was the Sense and Simplicity marketing campaign, which came to embody a whole new way of doing business at Philips. The primary target of the Sense and Simplicity campaign was customers aged 35-55. Philips was not thought of as a cool and attractive brand by Generation Y consumers. Philips must rewire the Sense and Simplicity campaign for the Generation Y market.

The IT productivity paradox debate has been going on for more than two decades, but the controversy has been exacerbated by a 2003 Harvard Business Review article by Nicolas Carr, who argues that IT doesn't matter. This case sheds light on the major drivers of IT investment: those investments targeted at improving operational efficiencies and those focused on entrenching a firm's strategic position. It does this by looking at the IT investment strategies of two of the world's largest financial institutions, HSBC and Citigroup. Of particular interest are how HSBC and Citigroup spend on IT projects, what drives their investments and the viability of measuring the efficacy of their investments in terms of improving operational efficiency or strategic position. By comparing the IT investments strategies of both banks, students will learn about the IT valuation process, the role of IT as a strategic necessity and IT's potential role in sustaining a firm's competitive advantage. Nominee for best paper award, International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2007)

In the early 1790's, a flood of newly issued public and private securities sparked an investment boom in the nascent United States. In New York, the bustling commercial district along Wall Street emerged as the center of the city's securities trade. One of the many Americans drawn into the frenetic and largely unregulated securities market was William Duer, who ultimately became a major player on the Street. As it turned out, however, Duer's financial dealings proved unsustainable, and his financial collapse helped to bring the securities boom to a halt. Shocked by the widespread devastation wrought by Wall Street's first panic, the New York legislature acted quickly to ban outdoor securities auctions and a popular class of financial instruments known as "time bargains," both of which were thought to have contributed to the boom and bust on Wall Street. Facing public outrage along with the new legal restrictions, New York's top brokers had to decide whether a new system for securities trading was needed and, if so, what it should look like.

In early 1720, the South Sea Company and the Bank of England were competing for the right to issue new shares and to exchange those shares for government bonds that were then in the hands of the public. The British government had already executed two such debt conversion with the South Sea Company. Most individuals who had converted bonds for shares in 1711 and 1719 had seen their South Sea shares appreciate in the meantime, and the government had lowered its debt servicing costs as a result of these two conversions. The conversion under consideration in 1720, however, would be on a much larger scale. In time, the South Sea Company won the bidding war, and the House of Commons approved its debt conversion plan. Now it was up to the House of Lords to approve or reject the deal.

In 1830, Governor Levi Lincoln, Jr. urged the Massachusetts state legislature to introduce a limited liability regime for manufacturing corporations similar to that adopted in neighboring states. At least since 1809, shareholders in the state's manufacturing corporations had faced unlimited liability, which held shareholders personally liable for corporate debts. While unlimited liability was meant to ensure financial prudence, Lincoln and others worried that this policy was doing more harm than good and driving capital from the state. With the governor pushing for action, it was up to the state legislature to decide how to proceed.

The New York State Legislature had come to a standstill in 1829 as lawmakers refused to charter any new banks or recharter any existing banks. Four of New York's forty banks had failed since 1825, and many legislatures believed that a significant change in the banking regime was needed to shore up the state's financial systems. Others, however, feared that a major change in the law was too risky, especially since over three-quarters of the state's banks held charters that were slated to expire over the next four years. On the table was a completely untested proposal to create a mandatory public insurance fund that would back the banknotes and deposits of every state bank. As bank charters throughout New York State rapidly approached expiration, lawmakers faced a tough decision: should they pass the bill and gamble with the untried insurance fund, or should they go seek a more traditional solution to the state's banking woes?