The new vice-president for Kentucky Fried Chicken in southeast Asia, must weigh the growth benefits of investing in China with alternative opportunities in the region. He is at the exploratory stage of market research and is focusing his attention on four possible locations in China. He must also balance his own personal ambitions with the possibilities for failure, not only in China, but the rest of southeast Asia. (A 31-minute video is available .....more

HSBC is one of the largest and most global financial institutions in the world. The company has identified Bital, Mexico's fourth largest bank, as a potential acquisition target. Negotiations have come down to the wire, and the controlling Mexican shareholders are trying to get HSBC to raise its offer. Is it worth it? HSBC must decide on both strategic and short-term financial criteria under some degree of uncertainty as illuminated by a due diligence .....more

Bombardier Transportation, one of the world's largest manufacturers of passenger rail cars, has successfully negotiated the purchase of Adtranz, a large European manufacturer of rail equipment. The newly appointed chief executive officer has been brought in to manage the acquisition. The new CEO faces many challenges including decisions about the pace of integration, location of headquarters, organization structure, personnel retention and personal .....more

Pinnacle Technologies is an unusual company in that it acts essentially as a subsidiary of U.K.-based Psion Teklogix although it is 100 per cent independent. Psion Teklogix manufacturers wireless data communication devices that are used primarily in inventory management activities performed in warehouses, ports, factories and airports. In the mid 1990s, Psion gave Pinnacle Technologies exclusive Middle Eastern rights to the Teklogix technology and .....more

Maple Leaf Foods is Canada's largest and most dominant food processor. The recently appointed senior marketing director discovers on her first day on the job that the hot dog business at the company is completely broken: market share is down, profits are in free-fall, the products taste bad, there is a proliferation of brands and her team is a mess. To make matters worse, she inherits a job where there is little market data in the files and little .....more

In this supplement to Maple Leaf Consumer Foods - Fixing Hot Dogs (A), product 9B03M017, the senior marketing director coordinates the gathering of data on the company's hot dog products and spends considerable time analyzing the data. She has determined areas for improvement and works with senior management, research and development, production, distributors and consumers in implementing improvements on taste and product positioning. With her .....more

The general manager of a beverage company must decide what to do about the declining performance of its' Vietnam-based operation. Employees seem unmotivated and lackadaisical about their work and these same workers blame the weather for the poor results.

mGames is a manufacturer of game-based software for portable computers, PDAs and cell phones. The company's new chief executive officer has just been informed of a potential hostile takeover of the company by a major PDA manufacturer. At the same time he receives a phone call from a senior executive at a Scandinavian telecommunications company expressing interest in forming a partnership. With all of this happening, the chief executive officer .....more

Hutchison Whampoa Limited is a holding company based in Hong Kong with its core business interests in property development, retail and manufacturing, telecommunications and finance and investment. The deputy managing director must assess the company's corporate strategy. She must consider how the corporate office adds value to the underlying business and review the business portfolio and its considerable geographic scope. It is unlikely Hutchison .....more

Global Sources Limited is Asia's leading publisher of business-to-business (B2B) trade-related magazines. In the latter half of the 1990s, the Internet became a powerful force for change in the business world, leading to an explosion of Internet-related activities by both traditional bricks and mortar companies, as well as countless upstart dot.coms. The chairman and chief executive officer of Global Sources had foreseen the opportunities afforded .....more