October 2012

		Coursepack Builder
		New 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.

Symantec Corporation Convertible Notes With Call Spread
The board of directors of Symantec Corporation asked a consultant for an independent opinion on an important financing decision. Symantec had been working with several investment banks on a plan to raise debt to repurchase common shares. The consultant found it to be an interesting financing plan; whereas repurchasing shares immediately would increase Symantec’s financial leverage, converting the notes in the future would reduce leverage at a potentially significant dilutive cost to the firm’s equity. More interestingly, the company negotiated with the investment banks to buy a call spread on its own stock, covering the same number of shares as would be issued to noteholders upon conversion. After reviewing the proposal, the consultant tried to understand the motivation behind the structure of the transaction. Why would Symantec choose to issue convertible bonds, and why would it intend to buy the call spread?

This case will help students gain an understanding of how financial derivatives, in particular options, are used in corporate financing activities. Students will be exposed to option payoffs, strategies and pricing.

Selecting a Pharmaceutical Company from Northeast Asia for Investment
Joe Clift, a co-founder and managing partner of private equity firm Blacksmith Partners LLC in New York, managed his company’s emerging market funds for several industries. He planned to add one company from Northeast Asia to generate growth in his pharmaceutical industry portfolio, and had focused on three outstanding pharmaceutical companies: Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. from Japan, Dong-A Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. from Korea, and Sinovac Biotech Company Ltd. from China. All three companies had shown strong growth in their respective markets over the years. With an ever-growing population of senior citizens in Northeast Asia, the managing partner predicted strong potential growth in drugs for chronic diseases in these emerging markets. Which company should Clift choose among these three companies, and why?

• This case has been developed for classes such as intermediate financial accounting and/or financial statement analysis.
• To formulate ratios using financial statements and to make financial decisions concerning both accounting and investments.
• To calculate an array of financial ratios.
• To use the background of each company to analyze the factors affecting financial health and other types of issues in making an investment decision.

Prada: To IPO or Not to IPO: That Is the Question
Prada currently requires a significant amount of capital both to re-finance debt that is maturing in the next six to twelve months and to finance its intended growth into the Asian (especially Chinese) markets. Since financial markets are aware of Prada’s pressing need to raise capital, it is important for the board of directors to develop a credible strategy for raising the necessary capital of at least €1 billion. Although the press has been suggesting that Prada will do an initial public offering, the company has tried this several times in the past with no success, mainly because of bad timing (9/11, the SARS outbreak, and the ongoing global financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis).

This case is designed to provide students with an opportunity to evaluate some of the wide variety of financing tools available to firms in global financial markets. The case takes the position of investment banker Guido Santini, who is tasked with coming up with multiple alternatives to propose to the board. He cannot just propose one alternative given Prada’s past experiences with raising capital, so he needs to rank several alternatives. The case provides ample background on different debt and equity options in Europe, North America, and Asia.

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.