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This case features an entrepreneur who must decide whether to sell his small distribution company. The case explores several issues for class discussion: (1) valuation of a private company, (2) assessing the entrepreneur's perspective and alternatives, (3) deal structuring (including earnouts), (4) risks and their effect on value, and (5) advice from a banker's perspective.

This case is a relatively straightforward exercise in valuing a potential acquisition target. The case affords students an opportunity to use both discounted cash flow and multiples in their analyses. In addition, at the instructor's discretion, students can do a simple valuation of an option contract and analyze currency choice in a debt issue. The latter two objectives arise if the case is used as an examination. Case Exhibit 1 poses the relevant questions for student preparation.

Alice Handy, an investment professional with 30 years' experience as head of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company, has opened a new asset management firm targeted at midsize endowments and nonprofit institutions in January 2004. Her business, Investure, LLC, offered outsourced investment services to institutions with $150 million to $1 billion in assets and access to top-performing managers at lower cost than a fund of funds (FoF). Smith College, a prestigious liberal arts college with a nearly $1 billion endowment, is interested in increasing its current allocation to private equity. Handy and her partner are preparing to meet with Smith's trustees in an attempt to win Smith College as Investure's first client. The case presents three different approaches to private equity investing: direct investment through a traditional limited partnership, investment through a FoF, or investment through Investure's outsourced model. The class discussion presents an opportunity to evaluate advantages and shortcomings of each approach, introduce key terminology, and discuss the current trends in the private equity market. Students are given the cash inflows and outflows for a representative investment in a venture capital fund of the type Handy hopes to invest in on behalf of Smith College. The main analytical task requires students to evaluate the expected gross and net returns generated by the representative investment under each of the different approaches and fee structures.

This case was written for an early class in courses on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital, or private equity. It can also be used in specialized courses for fund trustees interested in alternative assets.

The pace of international mergers and acquisitions activity has quickened dramatically in the past few years. European companies have continued their spending spree in the United States, while Europe, especially the United Kingdom, has become a corporate battleground. In addition, Japan has become a major buyer in Europe as well as in the United States.

This paper attempts to shed light on the issue whether investors' earnings expectations completely align with analysts' forecasts. I find that current price level is not significantly correlated with one‐year‐out realized earnings, but, it is significantly correlated with two‐year‐out, three‐year‐out, four‐year‐out and five‐year‐out realized earnings after I control for analysts' forecasts (and current earnings). Current price is found to be useful in improving the accuracy of long‐term analyst consensus forecasts. My findings are consistent with the notion that the market's near term expectation closely follows analyst forecasts while the market's long‐term expectation contains more information than analyst consensus forecasts.

A business analyst at Mead Corporation had just begun the process of estimating Mead's cost of capital for the fourth quarter of 1990. As part of her analysis, she hoped to explain why the cost of equity had increased and recommend whether the company should consider the increase a problem.

Reviews, from an anthropological perspective, three 1993 additions to the Gulf Publishing Company's “Managing Cultural Differences” Series. This trilogy is comprised of the volumes Developing the Global Organization: Strategies for Human Resource Professionals, Transcultural Leadership: Empowering the Diverse Workforce, and Multicultural Management: New Skills for Global Success. Examines the five concepts of globalisation, diversity, multiculturalism, transcultural, and empowerment central to the trilogy and to anthropology, and as they are used in both. Views the global paradox — a bigger world economy requires the more powerful smallest of players (e.g., entrepreneurs) — as a useful framework for understanding these and related concepts as they operate in the global village today, and as they may be employed throughout and beyond the 21st century. Finally, reports on: (1) the training, transformation and development tasks of global managers of complexity in business as well as in government, academia, and the military; and, (2) the intercultural learning strategies through which these tasks are achieved and through which these managers, the multicultural workforce and teams they lead, and their organisations are empowered to contribute, collaborate and fully participate in producing their major project: Service, country, group, business, or social structure through the mixture of peoples or technology” (p. 242). This suggests a process, a becoming. In Developing the Global Organization, Robert T. Moran, Philip R. Harris and William G. Stripp continue that globalisation is both a way to think and to act. Specifically, it moves individuals “away from parochialism towards transnationalism”. And it nurtures a state of mind geared toward a more effective use of personal and organisational resources (p. 299).

This paper aims to set out key steps in the development, engagement and retention of analytical leaders, showing why they are such a core resource, highlighting the key types of analytical talent and focusing on the core skills needed to attain analytical proficiency.

The research is based on a comprehensive survey of 799 analytical professionals employed by large US companies across a range of industries carried out in July 2008, as well as on the book Analytics at Work by Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris and Robert Morison, which was published in 2010.

The research identified the core skills requirements for each of the four main types of analytical talent, highlighting the skill set needed by analytical leaders. Where developing and retaining this vital resource is concerned, it was found that analysts who understood their roles were six times more likely to be engaged than those who did not.

Organizations need to take steps to develop, care for and retain their analytical talent. This is a prerequisite for establishing analytical leadership in a recruitment market where competition for analytics talent is increasing all the time.

As well as drawing on exclusive research, the paper shows that Accenture uses case studies based on in‐depth interviews and thought leadership to demonstrate analytical leaders' unique qualities.

This paper seeks to present a best practice guide to using analytics as a tool for leaders at every organizational level to drive their companies towards better decision making.

The piece is based on the book Analytics at Work by Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris and Robert Morison, which was published in 2010.

Accenture research shows conclusively that high‐performing businesses have a much more developed analytical orientation than other organizations. In fact they are five times more likely than their competitors to view analytical capabilities as being core to the business.

Senior executives are playing a crucial role in moving their organizations towards analytical decision making. Experience shows that, if leaders support analytical initiatives, they are much more likely to succeed. This is partly because of the powerful influence they exert over business culture, and partly because they can deploy the people, money and time needed to develop effective analytics capabilities. That said, senior executives are not the only people needed to build an analytical business. Almost any employee can play a vital role as an analytical leader.

Accenture uses case studies based on in‐depth interviews and thought leadership to demonstrate how individuals at different organizational levels have succeeded in driving their business towards analytical decision making – with impressive results.

This paper examines the realignment that is currently taking place within the property supply industry. It traces the origin of service provision within the industry during the last recession. It then outlines the evolution of service provision into a range of products, or occupancy solutions, to suit the increasingly complex needs of occupiers. The paper identifies the ‘new’ providers and explains the subtle differences in the breadth and depth of their offers. The paper ends with the key challenges facing both suppliers and occupiers of flexible solutions.