October 2012

		Coursepack Builder
		New Translated Cases in Accounting & Finance
		Best Selling Cases for 2011-2012
		Free Resources and Tips for Learning & Teaching with Cases

The Coursepack Builder was officially launched in September and has proven to be a popular tool with numerous customized coursepacks being created and downloaded daily!

Log In to create your own custom resource that can be downloaded instantly from the Ivey Publishing website. With enough content to create an entire course, you can use the Coursepack Builder tool to assemble cases, articles & technical notes from the Ivey collection, or any of the other collections available through Ivey Publishing.

Need help? View any of the instructional videos below or email for assistance.

Part 1 - Creating Coursepacks

Part 2 - Building Your Coursepack

Part 3 - Finding & Adding Products to a Coursepack

Part 4 - Changing the Order of Items, Editing & Previewing Your Coursepack

Part 5 - Activating & Purchasing the Coursepack

Part 6 - Managing the Coursepacks: Deleting, Re-Using & Archiving

Part 7 - Adding Delegates

The newest cases from the Ivey case collection are available for review. View New Cases for more details on cases registered in your discipline.

Predicting a Firm's Financial Distress: The Merrill Lynch Co. Statement of Cash Flows (Simplified Chinese version)
During the night of September 14, 2008, a few hours before Lehman Brothers folded, Merrill Lynch declared defeat: it was acquired by Bank of America (BofA) ending 90 years of independence. Before its buyout, Merrill Lynch was the world’s largest and most widely recognized stockbroker. At the start of 2008, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns were the five largest standalone investment banks, with a combined total history of 549 years. But within a span of six months, they would all be gone as independent investment banks. 

The numerous bankruptcies and financial difficulties experienced by American banks and several financial institutions in 2008, a phenomenon that had been unseen in analysts’ forecasts, point to shortcomings in existing financial analysis techniques. A key question is the following: What is the informative value of the statement of cash flows in predicting the financial distress of a company? This case is intended for MBA or undergraduate students (future managers, investors, and auditors) to make sense of cash flow statements and look at companies’ performance beyond statements of earnings. The aim of this case is to enhance the informative value of cash flows by doing a thorough analysis of the statements of cash flows disclosed in the three years preceding the 2008 financial crisis by Merrill Lynch & Co.

Cadim: China and India Real Estate Deals (Simplified Chinese version)
The president and chief operating officer of Cadim, the real estate arm of the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Canada's largest pension fund management firm, had recently been approached with several interesting multimillion-dollar investment opportunities in India and China. Although Cadim was still deciding whether to invest in either country (see Cadim: The China and India Real Estate Market Entry Decisions), if the company chose to do so, it wanted suitable partners and deals lined up. Each deal had its pros and cons, but the president knew all too well that the wrong combination of partner and deal could have dire consequences for Cadim's profits and the team's reputation. The case analysis involves risk assessment, partner assessment, cash flow analysis and portfolio fit analysis.

China's Banks 2012 (Simplified Chinese version)
In the 1990s, considerable debate arose concerning the strength and stability of China's banks. Of particular concern were the debts owed to the banks by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Many SOEs were experiencing financial difficulties and so they might not have been able to repay these loans. Some analysts emphasized that, since the banks and the SOEs were both owned by the government, the only relevant concern was the financial strength of the government and its preparedness to take responsibility for any of the banks' non-performing loans. In the early years of the 21st century, the government undertook a widespread program aimed at improving the balance sheets at the banks by purchasing non-performing loans from the banks and then reselling these at a discount, often to foreign private sector financial institutions. Prior to 2010, this process provided a generally accepted faith in the stability and security of China's banks. Total non-performing loans as a per cent of total bank loans decreased from 20 per cent in 2003 to three per cent in 2008. The year 2010 brought a new realization that the non-performing loan problem had reappeared. However, China's banks now had private as well as government shareholders, and so the solution had become more complex. The government's response was to insist that China's banks increase their capital base by issuing new equity.

Did you know that over 1.6 million copies of Ivey cases are used at thousands of business schools around the world? With cases written by leading Ivey faculty and by authors from around the world, the Ivey case collection represents a wide range of business issues from a truly global perspective.  We would like to thank all of our authors for their contribution to the Ivey case collection and highlight some of our best selling cases for 2011-2012. 

Starbucks by Mary M. Crossan, Ariff Kachra

Molson Canada: Social Media Marketing by Deborah Compeau, Israr Qureshi

FIJI Water and Corporate Social Responsibility - Green Makeover or Greenwashing? by James McMaster, Jan Nowak

Visit our website to view our entire Best Selling Case Collection which includes a variety of case studies across all major business disciplines.

If teaching with cases is new to you, or if you are looking for a way to improve your current methodology, check out these free resources available from Ivey Publishing.

Learning with Cases, 4th Edition
A complementary copy is available upon request. This soft cover book is a concise handbook written specifically for students to enhance their learning with cases. Numerous and helpful suggestions cover the complete case learning process including individual reading and preparation, small group discussion, large group (classroom) discussion, making case presentations and writing case exams and reports ... More

The Business Plan Presentation
This complementary case has been written to help students understand the importance of class management and illustrate the challenges associated with English as a Second Language (ESL) students and how to best approach these students to ensure their language difficulties do not limit their learning. It also emphasizes the need for instructors to be clear about course objectives and class requirements. The case can be used in a course on teaching, ideally in a section on class management, teaching ESL students or teaching in a cross-cultural context. It can also be used as preparation for participants in student-run initiatives in developing countries. Registered academics can Log In to download the accompanying teaching note.

Plagiarism and Discipline
When a professor finds out that one of the groups in her Management Information Systems (MIS) MBA class had plagiarized part of their assignment from other sources, she did not know what to do. Plagiarism was not an unusual situation to her; in the past, she had always reported it. Her university also took plagiarism seriously; students who were caught were expelled from the university. But this situation seemed a little different, and she wondered whether reporting the students and having them expelled was the sensible approach this time.

This complementary case is designed to support workshops and teaching on the subject of teaching and learning with cases. This case emphasizes issues of dealing with student plagiarism on a case analysis assignment.

Read the case teaching tips Christopher Williams, Assistant Professor of International Business at the Richard Ivey School of Business recently shared with the Global Business School Network.