These two cases consider the capital investment decisions to be made by executives of this large chemicals firm in January 2001. The A case presents a go/no-go project evaluation regarding improvements to a polypropylene production plant. This B case reviews the same project but from one level higher, where the executive faces an either/or investment decision between two mutually exclusive projects. The objective of the two cases is to expose students to a wide range of capital-budgeting issues which include, among others, the identification of relevant cash flows, the critical assessment of a capital-investment evaluation system, the classic “cross-over” problem, in which project rankings disagree on the basis of net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR)· The assessment of real option value latent in managerial flexibility to change operating technologies.
