Case studies

The subject area is international business and strategy. The case allows scope for the following areas: internationalisation, market strategy, emerging market multinational companies, and doing business in Africa.

The primary target audience for this teaching case is postgraduate business students such as Master of Business Administration (MBA), or postgraduate management programmes. The case is primarily designed for use in courses that cover strategy or international business.

This case centres on the international growth strategy of FMBcapital Holdings Group (FMB), the Malawian commercial banking firm. The case finds the founder and current group chairman, Hitesh Anadkat, in 2016, as he and the FMB board are about to decide on the next move in their Southern African strategy. Since opening the first FMB branch in Malawi and becoming the country's first commercial banker in 1995, Anadkat and his team have ridden a wave of financial deregulation across the region to successfully expand into neighbouring Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique. Now, an opportunity to gain a foothold in Zimbabwe means the leaders must decide (1) whether they want to continue to grow the FMB footprint across the region, or focus on their integration and expansion efforts within existing markets; and (2) how they will realise this strategy.

International expansion – identifying the need to expand into new markets; identifying the combination of internal strengths and external conditions that make international expansion viable; and identifying and analysing each possible new market(s) and the decision-making process involved.

Political, social and economic factors in Africa – understanding how these external institutional factors present constraints, risks and opportunities for internationalisation and hence shape strategy; understanding that these factors may vary significantly across countries on the continent (in spite of their geographic proximity) and in some cases, within a single country; and understanding that by selecting markets with extreme socially and politically volatile contexts, the risk of a worst-case scenario transpiring (in which institutional forces trump business strategy) is appreciable.

Combination of resource- and institutional-based approaches – recognising that successful internationalisation requires capitalising upon both internal resources and institutional mastery.

Choosing expansion strategies – assessing the type of new market entry (e.g. greenfield or acquisition of existing operations) and its adequacy for penetrating a new market.

Using networks and local partners – to substitute and enhance the benefits that originally flow from a small (and sometime family-established) business, with an emphasis on acquisition of skills and networks in foreign countries.

Regional integration – optimising business operations through a sharing or pooling of resources and improved capital flow between subsidiaries, in some instances by taking advantage of economies of scale (this extends to enhancing the reputation and awareness of a brand across a wider region).

Family businesses – identifying the value that can be gained through establishing a family business with the support of many “close” stakeholders while also noting the limitation that exist as expansion and growth is required.

Provincial Industries has decided that the time has come to expand internationally. In this case and the activities along with it, individuals will need to consider different attributes or factors in each category evaluated. These categories include: business climate, communications, financial services, health services and “Quality of Life”, infrastructure, and transportation. This evaluation will decide the new international office location.

Steel Corp has a large production capacity but a shrinking steel market in Europe. Reaching growing markets like China and U.A.E will be important to sustaining and growing revenue but is tough due to higher transportation costs. In this case, users must identify and use logistics data; logistics customer segmentation and related cost analysis.

The COO for Suape Container Terminal, the largest deep–water port in Brazil's Northeast must consider a proposal presented by the users' council that calls for the establishment of a reservation scheme that minimizes the risk of docking delays. Under this proposal, ocean carriers, on the one hand, agree to pay a reservation fee that significantly increases revenue for Tecon Suape. On the other hand, they expect Tecon Suape to compensate them financially when a berth is not available upon vessel arrival. Tecon Suape's management team must evaluate that suggestion, as the team prepares to enter contractual negotiations with the users.

This case was designed to facilitate discussion of how a cyberattack was remediated by a major public university. Students are challenged to think through how to best manage the remediation project, including the application of best practices such as risk management, stakeholder management, communication plans, outsourcing/procurement management, and cyberattack remediation. The Phoenix Project was a success from multiple perspectives, and as such provides a useful example of how to manage an unplanned, mission-critical project well.

At three o'clock in the morning on September 10, 2001, Thierry Hautillac, a risk arbitrageur, learns of the final agreement between Pinault-Printemps-Redoute SA (“PPR”) and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (“LVMH”). After a contest for control of Gucci lasting over two years, PPR has emerged as the winner. PPR and LVMH have agreed for PPR to buy about half of LVMH's stock in Gucci for $94 per share, for Gucci to pay an extraordinary dividend of $7 per share, and for PPR to give a two and a half year put option with a strike price of $101.50 to the public shareholders in Gucci. The primary task for the student in this case is to recommend a course of action for Hautillac: should he sell his 2% holding of Gucci shares when the market opens, continue to hold his shares, or buy more shares? The student must estimate the risky arbitrage returns from each of these choices. As a basis for this decision, the student must value the terms of payment and consider what the Gucci stock price will do upon the market's open. The student must determine the intrinsic value of Gucci using a DCF model as well as information on peer firms and transactions. The student must consider potential synergies between Gucci and PPR and between Gucci and LVMH. The student must assess the likelihood of a higher bid, using analysis of price changes at earlier events in the contest for clues.

In early 2012, an equity analyst, was examining the jet fuel hedging strategy of JetBlue Airways for the coming year. Because airlines cross-hedged their jet fuel price risk using derivatives contracts on other oil products such as WTI and Brent crude oil, they were exposed to basis risk. In 2011, dislocations in the oil market led to a Brent-WTI premium wherein jet fuel started to move with Brent instead of WTI, as it traditionally did. Faced with hedging losses, several U.S. airlines started to change their hedging strategies, moving away from WTI. But others worried that the Brent-WTI premium might be a temporary phenomenon. For 2012, would JetBlue continue using WTI for its hedges, or would it switch to an alternative such as Brent?

This case could be used in entrepreneurship, strategy, and small-business courses. It presents classic issues regarding successful start-ups such as how to choose from a multitude of growth opportunities; how to pace growth so as not to dilute quality control and financial risk tolerance; and how to choose a strategic focus.

This case challenges students to apply financial reporting concepts pertaining, most notably, to liabilities and expenses in a specific corporate situation. In the context of an interesting, but noncomplex, technical accounting issue, students debate the best way for Adenosine Therapeutics to present its compensation arrangements in its financial statements. In addition, this case also prompts students to debate the best way for a growing company, with cash constraints, to provide incentive and maintain top employees.

This case raises the question: How does a company reasonably estimate and record entries for uncollectible trade receivables, and under what circumstances are receivables written off as uncollectible? The required accounting transactions for the case involve estimating a receivables allowance both as a percentage of sales and as a percentage of accounts receivable and making specific account judgments under the direct write?off method. The subjective issues involve analyzing and assessing a company's methods of collection and accounting for bad debts.