This case follows Maxine Waters, chairwoman for the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, as she faces the stock market phenomenon in early 2021 surrounding GameStop. The morning of February 17, 2021, Waters was leading a hearing on allegations of manipulation in the market for GameStop stock. A few weeks prior, the company’s stock surged from around $40 a share to nearly $4
This case is used in Darden’s course elective, “The Brand Strategist’s Toolkit: Creating, Developing, and Managing Superior Brands.” The case discusses the fallout following the Coca-Cola Company's (Coke's) response to the new Georgia voting laws in 2021, addressing both marketing and brand purpose from an unbiased perspective. According to the bill’s sponsor and chair of the House Special Committ
After a successful first consulting project, Sarah is about start another case. She is tasked with developing a customer segmentation and growth workstream for a building products company that is under pressure from competitors. The case includes a large dataset with two years of customer information, for student analysis.
This case follows the protagonist, chief investment officer of a multifamily office, as she debates whether or not Venn, a factor-based portfolio attribution tool developed by quant manager Two Sigma, will be a beneficial tool for her firm. Using Venn, she starts looking into possible hedge fund investments in hope of both further diversifying her clients’ portfolios and hedging against a possible
This public-sourced case uses the California housing crisis to analyze economic policy in an environment featuring a rising cost of living and shrinking affordable housing options. The case discusses policy options as well as the role and incentives of the private sector in helping develop more affordability. In the case, economist Renee Bowen examines the tradeoffs involved in government interven
Angus MacIntyre, CEO of Dumbarton Bearing Supply, LLC (Dumbarton), is reviewing a proposal to invest in a new type of product: ceramic ball bearings designed for marine applications. The new bearings could open Dumbarton to new markets and make it more competitive, but demand is difficult to estimate, making the investment’s financial prospects uncertain. More problematic is deciding which of two
This case explores the role of deposit insurance in financial stability, including the importance of risk-adjusted insurance premiums and the complementarity between capital requirements and deposit insurance when risk is imperfectly measured by the insurer. The case is intended to follow a class on maturity transformation (e.g., as presented in "The Economics of Maturity Transformation" [UVA-GEM-
This case explores private and public proposals for digital forms of money that bypass the commercial banking system. A private proposal comes from Facebook’s Libra. A public proposal comes from central bank digital currency (CBDC). The case begins with Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Libra and the ensuing pushback from policymakers. One of the main concerns—financial stability—is revisited during a
In late November 2017, Roark Capital Group (Roark) must decide on a last, best offer to purchase Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) in a leveraged buyout (LBO) for $157 per share. That bid had followed a series of offers that began in August 2017, at $150 per share, after a protracted proxy fight by activist investor Marcato Capital (Marcato) ended with the resignation of BWW’s longtime CEO, Sally Smith. Ma
This case introduces students to relational databases and the basics of collaborative filtering, a popular recommendation system technique. The case points to a dataset shared by GroupLens, a research group developing algorithms that supply movie recommendations through a website called MovieLens. SQL queries provided in the case propose a collaborative filtering strategy for generating simple rec
This case explores the dynamic allocation approach to investing, an approach that would time the market based on factors’ relative valuations. Research Affiliates created a RAFI Dynamic Multifactor US index that dynamically allocated five factor strategies: value, quality, momentum, size, and low volatility. In this course, students will utilize various information presented in the case to discuss
This case offers applied practice for students in drafting testable user stories (agile), including the use of jobs-to-be-done, storyboards, and metrics to drive toward a specific, testable digital design. It starts with a brief overview of HVAC in a Hurry (HinH), a fictional supplier of heating and air-conditioning services for commercial properties, and gives a design brief for its new parts-ord
