Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

Tiger Investment Partners. “To Stream Or Not To Stream” Case Study, Roger R. Schnorbus

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

Tiger Investment Partners (TIP) TIP is a boutique technology investment firm in Richmond, VA. It was founded in 2012 by its three principal partners and is managing over $300 million in investment funds. Its stated mission is to someday be as successful as Berkshire Hathaway with a focus on firms that were or would be major disruptors in their given industries.

Investcorp, Jeremy Kappes, Haynes King, Jamie Mattioli, Prasad Vaze, Timothy Kyle Benusa, Sam Gottwald, Thomas Arnold, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Investcorp is a publicly traded global alternative asset management company headquartered in Manama, Bahrain. It manages a huge hedge fund, along with other assets. The case describes Investcorp’s history, investment strategies, and major competitors. The company has a highly aggressive growth strategy, but it is also facing the retirement of its CEO.

Salesforce.Com, Sean Bielawski, Charles Kempe, Austin Mcdaniel, Adam Tate, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Innovation! One of the most innovative companies, and also one of the best companies to work for, is losing money. This case traces the meteoric rise of the number one customer relationship management service provider against huge rivals such as Microsoft and Oracle. Detail regarding their highly innovative Scrum system is provided, along with detail regarding their marketing approach. How can Salesforce.com regain profitability while continuing to grow in a highly competitive industry?

Ryanair Holdings, Nicole Blake Tran, Jamie Perkinson, Caron Sinnenberg, Lionel Tarcia, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

The crass Irish CEO of Ryanair presides over a modern miracle. Ryanair, with its ridiculously low prices and poor reputation for service, has become one of Europe’s largest and most successful airlines. Employees pay for their own training, flights are cancelled if they won’t be full enough to be profitable, and the concept of “no frills” is heartily embraced. However, some new competitors have come on the scene, and Ryanair may be forced to improve its service and reputation to keep up.

A Model To Support It Infrastructure Planning And The Allocation Of It Governance Authority, Steven M. Thompson, Peter Ekman, Daniel Selby, Jonathan W. Whitaker

Management Faculty Publications

Information technology (IT) requires a significant investment, involving up to 10.5% of revenue for some firms. Managers responsible for aligning IT investments with their firm's strategy seek to minimize technology costs, while ensuring that the IT infrastructure can accommodate increasing utilization, new software applications, and modifications to existing software applications. It becomes more challenging to align IT infrastructure and IT investments with firm strategy when firms operate in multiple geographic markets, because the firm faces different competitive positions and unique challenges in each market.

We discussed these challenges with IT executives at four Forbes Global 2000 firms headquartered in Northern …

Chesapeake Energy Corporation, Brian Blaylock, David Earle, Danielle Smith, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Chesapeake is the second largest producer of natural gas in the United States, but the company is struggling financially. In addition, its CEO left the company amid governance concerns. This case provides a description of upstream, midstream and downstream energy production and trends in those segments, and how Chesapeake has shifted its emphasis in an effort to increase its performance. The extreme price volatility in this industry is also described, as are technological advances in areas such as “fracking.”

The Effect Of State Corporate Income Tax Rate Cuts On Job Creation, Xiaobing Shuai, Christine Chmura

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

This paper compares the employment growth of states that enacted corporate income tax rate cuts in the past 23 years with those making no changes. Overall employment comparisons from 1990 to 2012 suggest that a reduction in the corporate income tax rate is associated with faster job creation. The states that cut corporate income tax rates started with slower employment growth than the states that made no changes. However, the growth gaps between the two groups of states disappeared in about five years after the tax cuts were made. Regression results confirm the observation that lower corporate tax rates have …

Sony Corporation: Reinventing Itself To Rediscover The Technological Edge, Chatterji Dheeman, Hayes Schildwachter, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Sony is a global conglomerate with a wide variety of businesses in its portfolio, but a heavy emphasis on electronics and related products. Due to a number of setbacks such as the earthquake in Japan and a weak global economy, the firm has experienced sales declines and negative earnings in recent years. In early 2012 the company announced a major restructuring and new strategy to regain its edge. However, Sony has an uphill battle.

Maintaining A Flexible Payout Policy In A Mature Industry: The Case Of Crown Cork And Seal In The Connelly Era, James Ang, Tom Arnold, C. Mitchell Conover, Carol Lancaster

Finance Faculty Publications

As related in these pages, the history of Crown Cork and Seal (hereafter known as “Crown”) provides us with a case of a company that stopped paying dividends but establish a disciplined share repurchase policy and did so for all the right reasons. Under family ownership in the 1950s, Crown lost market share and was on the brink of bankruptcy when its largest shareholder, John Connelly, was elected chairman of the board in 1957. Under John Connelly’s leadership, the firm restructured its operations and began a payout policy based solely on stock repurchases. During the Connelly era, the firm did …

Paul M. Klekner (B), Roger R. Schnorbus

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

This is a fictitious case study, including the name of the restaurant and the people involved.

Paul Klekner graduated first in his class from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in 1998; his fellow students named him the chef most likely to succeed in the future. After graduation, he and his wife, Sarah, moved back to his home in Richmond, Virginia where he was employed as a chef at several restaurants including Bottega and Old Original Bookbinders. In 2003, he decided to open his own restaurant, Rogerios, in the Tobacco Row section of Richmond. With an inheritance of $300,000 he …

Duration Measures For Corporate Project Valuation, Tom Arnold, David S. North

Finance Faculty Publications

Sensitivity analysis is a very common exercise performed with the forecasting of project cash flows. In this paper, a duration-type measure is generated that provides a single number for the assessment of project cash flows relative to changes in the discount rate (or adjusted for changes in a particular cash flow model parameter). The calculation is no more difficult than the duration measures that already exist for bonds. Yet, the calculation provides valuable insight that many times is lost when performing sensitivity analysis. Further, at a minimum, the measure provides a gauge for the consequences of mis-specifiying the discount rate …

Brink's Entry Into China 2007, Roger R. Schnorbus, Littleton M. Maxwell

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

This case was prepared from various referenced sources and was developed solely for classroom discussion; the case is not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data or an illustration of either effective or ineffective handling of a business situation.

Ron Rokosz, the President of Brink's International was both pleased and distressed as he reviewed the financial results of International operations for fiscal 2006. Revenue had increased by 14% to $1,568.6M, driven by strong gains in both EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and LA (Latin America). In addition, operating profit in International was up by 68%. (Exhibit 1) …

Campbell Soup Company In 2004 (A), Roger R. Schnorbus

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

As fiscal 2004[1] began, Doug Conant, the President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company could take pride in the results of his 3-year transformation plan instituted in fiscal 2001 to revitalize the company. The key initiatives of the plan were to restore revenue and profitability growth and stimulate shareholder wealth.

Conant, who became President and CEO in January of 2001, called the plan, “the single most comprehensive commitment to revitalization ever undertaken in the 132-year history of Campbell Soup Company.”

The financial results achieved in fiscal 2002, the first year of the plan, were a mixed bag. Although net …

The New Auditor's Report: Have The Benefits Of Wording Changes Been Acknowledged Outside The Cpa Profession?, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

CPAs use the auditor's report to communicate their opinions of an entity's financial statements and related disclosures. Concerned parties, in turn, use the report to assess the integrity of the financial statements and the accuracy of the disclosures.

In 1988, the American Institute of CPAs auditing standards board established new wording for the standard unqualified audit report. It also revised the reporting requirements and types of audit reports allowed (for example, the subject-to report for uncertainties and except-for report for consistency departures were eliminated). The new wording appears in Statement on Auditing Standards no. 58, Reports on Audited Financial Statements …

Sas No. 58: Did The Asb Really Listen?, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

One thousand-plus letters are a lot of mail. That's how many comments the American Institute of CPAs auditing standards board received when it proposed 10 new standards to help close the expectations gap between what auditors perceive as their responsibility and what the public thinks. Did the ASB really listen to these comment letters before finalizing nine SASs, or did it simply solicit the comments to fulfill the standard-setting, due-process procedures mandated by the AICPA board of directors?