This case introduces Bed Bath & Beyond interim CFO Holly Etlin as she seeks to avoid a bankruptcy move for the retailer in early 2023. The company had just endured a difficult holiday shopping period that drained its cash and forced management to default on several credit and debt agreements. Those defaults triggered a grace period before a looming bankruptcy filing – barring a significant cash in
In this fictionalized case, Claire Marcy has just finished her first year running Marcy's Foods, Inc., a wholesale supplier of ingredients for the New York City restaurant industry. During the past year, she worked hard to grow the business and build her customer base, but with all the things that demanded her attention as the founder of a new company, keeping and managing its accounting records f
Marcy's Foods, Inc.—a wholesale supplier of ingredients for the New York City restaurant industry—has just completed its second year of operations, and founder Claire Marcy has hired local CPA Tom Hughes to prepare financial statements for the year. Having worked with Hughes the year before, Marcy is once again relying on him to help her assess the performance of the company.
This fictionalized c
Alicia Baxter, a Black, Jamaican-born associate at a top consulting firm in New York City, has just witnessed her mentor, James Johnson III, a Black American male, during a moment of vulnerability. Several days have passed since the murder of George Floyd by four police officers, and Johnson is visibly upset. Will he be a similar victim one day, he wonders? Baxter, however, is perplexed. Why has J
Moustafa Abbas, a practicing Muslim and senior analyst of tax and compliance at a Fortune 500 conglomerate in Pittsburgh, has just seen Zachary Goldstein at the company’s monthly employee resource group (ERG) meeting. Goldstein, who is wearing his typical black yarmulke, appears as though he’s been crying. Abbas wonders: Was Goldstein affected by the shooting at the local Tree of Life synagogue on
Against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, Mark Gallagher, a US Army veteran turned financial analyst at a premier film studio in Hollywood, has just learned that his boss has been sexually harassing his subordinate and friend, Rebecca Wagner. Disturbed and unsure of what to do, Wagner has requested Gallagher’s advice. But Gallagher doesn’t know what to do either. Should he confront his boss on
This 9-page case (13 pages with exhibits) captures the excitement generated by the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) during its 2024 season. It frames the history, challenges, highs and lows, ownership, and administration of the league in the context of a fictional young consultant charged with making recommendations to the WNBA's commissioner. Undergraduate, graduate, and executive s
This case is about the rise and fall of Theranos Inc. (Theranos), a private company founded by Elizabeth Holmes to revolutionize the blood-testing industry. Holmes dreamed of a world where blood tests for hundreds of diseases and medical conditions could be easily and relatively painlessly completed with just a simple prick of a finger and a few drops of blood. In the fall of 2003, at age 19, she
In August 2024, two founding partners at White Mountain Capital were presiding over an investment committee meeting discussing potential investments in two distinct private equity (PE) general partner (GP) firms. White Mountain Capital was a major player in a new frontier of PE investing: GP staking funds that bought minority equity stakes in PE firms. A GP equity stake afforded investors access t
This disguised case centers on Ellen Grant, who has recently launched a new venture capital (VC) firm, Everglow Ventures (Everglow). Everglow is not a VC firm “as usual”; the founders are seeking to disrupt the VC industry and address some of the shortcomings of the traditional interactions of VC funds with investors and start-ups. Along with proposing a rolling fund structure to investors with n
By the fourth quarter of 2010, VIZIO HOLDING CORP. (VIZIO) would become the largest flat-panel liquid-crystal display (LCD) TV manufacturer in the United States. But in 2002, when William Wang founded the company after leading a series of computer-monitor companies, that market dominance was far from clear.
This A case offers an overview of the evolution of flat-panel TV technologies, with parti
This B case follows an A case set in 2002, in which students considered how to design a value chain for VIZIO HOLDING CORP. (VIZIO) to capitalize on the opportunities afforded by new flat-screen technologies while overcoming the challenges. Now, in 2018, VIZIO has become a dominant player in the flat-screen TV market. It was the first TV manufacturer to introduce features enabling consumers to str