Kenedix, Inc. (Kenedix) was a Japanese financial institution that managed real-estate funds. Recent turbulence in the economy and market had impacted the company adversely. In light of Kenedix’s medium- and long-term goals, its president and chief executive officer (CEO) was meeting in March 2020 with the company’s management to come up with a viable plan to address these challenges. Over the past several years, Kenedix had worked to shift its business toward an asset-light model and had introduced innovative solutions such as crowdfunding. The CEO believed that more could be done to leverage emerging technologies into the company’s core business of real-estate fund management. He and his team needed to consider whether adopting blockchain technology in finance, or real-estate tokenization, would enable the company to thrive in a saturated real-estate equity market. Could tokenization act not only as a solution to the company’s current plight but as a strategic competency for the future?

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In October 2022, Adidas Group faced a significant public relations crisis involving its long-standing partnership with Kanye West, by then legally known as Ye. After terminating the partnership, Adidas was left with a substantial inventory of Ye-designed Yeezy sneakers and uncertainty about how to manage it. At the same time, Adidas was dealing with a shareholder lawsuit, with investors claiming the company failed to adequately disclose the risks associated with its Yeezy business.

Adidas must now consider its options in dealing with the Yeezy inventory, the financial consequences for reporting how it dealt with the inventory, and any obligations it has considering the pending shareholder lawsuit

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This case follows the Republic of Indonesia as it considered issuing its first blue bond to support its sustainable marine initiatives. The case puts students in the role of a team evaluating three potential markets for the issuance: US dollar (USD), euro (EUR), and Japan’s samurai bond market. Indonesia had built a strong track record in the USD and EUR markets, with multiple successful green and SDG bond issuances since 2018. Meanwhile, the samurai market presented a less conventional but potentially strategic opportunity. However, Japan’s conservative investor profile, which preferred plain-vanilla structures, and its limited secondary market liquidity presented trade-offs. The team faces a complex task to evaluate whether, how, and where Indonesia should launch its first blue bond.

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In early 2025, Elise Lim Ying Qi, a new analyst in the human resources (HR) analytics team at Murata Electronics Singapore Pte. Ltd. (MES), had inherited a regression-analysis project that identified key drivers of employee engagement. With results showing that variables like collaboration and job satisfaction were significant, Lim was now expected to interpret the findings and determine what next steps the company should take to improve employee engagement and retention. She was considering conducting focus groups to explore the results more deeply, but she wasn’t sure which employees to include, how to group them, or how to translate quantitative findings into actionable strategies. Facing uncertainty about how to design follow-up focus groups and communicate insights, she was navigating the challenges of applying data-driven methods in a traditionally qualitative HR environment.

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Great Eastern Holdings Ltd. (GEH)—a leading insurance company offering life and general insurance products, along with asset management services across Southeast Asia—received a buyout offer on May 10, 2024, from its major shareholder, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Ltd. (OCBC). The offer was to acquire the remaining 11.56 per cent stake for S$1.4 billion. The offer price of $25.60 per share was 36.9 per cent higher than GEH’s last traded price of $18.70 but 30 per cent lower than GEH’s embedded value per share of $36.59 as of December 31, 2023. GEH minority shareholders needed to make an informed decision based on the valuation of GEH and weigh the trade-offs of accepting the offer. Key considerations included fair valuation, the interest of minority shareholders, OCBC’s strategic intention, and the potential delisting of GEH from Singapore Exchange Ltd.

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Best World International Private Limited, a company specializing in skin care and wellness products, had faced a multitude of challenges, prompting management to consider delisting it from the public stock exchange. The issues included declining profits, market uncertainties, trading halts, volatile stock prices, and increased regulatory scrutiny.

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In July 2024, McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald’s) faced a strategic dilemma amid rising inflation and interest rates. The introduction of a $5 Meal Deal, designed to attract cost-sensitive customers, sparked concerns among franchisees about shrinking profit margins in the context of McDonald’s franchise-heavy model, which relied on revenue from rent and royalties. McDonald’s had also made substantial real estate investment a core part of its business strategy; this provided stable income but also brought significant liabilities. The company’s chief executive officer needed to consider how the $5 Meal Deal would affect McDonald’s financial resilience and margins in a high-inflation and high-interest-rate environment. What would its impact be on both franchised and company-operated restaurants?

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AirAsia X Berhad (AAX), a long-haul, low-cost airline based in Malaysia, faced a difficult financial situation in October 2021. As the global COVID-19 pandemic had forced the Malaysian government to impose travel restrictions and close its borders in 2020, the majority of AAX’s fleet had been grounded. By 2021, AAX’s total liabilities outweighed its total assets by RM33.581 billion. Unable to service the lease payments to lessors, AAX designated Lim Kian Onn to lead the company’s restructuring. Lim needed to determine how to carry out the corporate-restructuring exercise, the creditors’ tolerance for such an exercise, and what terms to propose to creditors.

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Multinational transportation company Uber Technologies Inc. (Uber), based in California, had consistently provided stock and options to its employees, leading to substantial stock-based compensation expenses. Instead of the metrics used in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Uber had emphasized a non-GAAP earnings metric that excluded stock-based compensation expenses because they did not involve any cash outflows. Despite this, the company had announced its first-ever stock repurchase in 2024 to counter the share dilution from stock-based compensation. This raised questions about whether stock-based compensation should still be considered a non-cash expense. An analyst working on a valuation of the company wondered how to incorporate Uber’s stock buyback into her valuation model: should Uber’s financial performance and compensation metrics still exclude the stock-based compensation expense?

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The case explored whether a novel design for a recycling bin could promote proper recycling behaviours in Singapore. The redesigned recycling bins were initially deployed at different sites around the National University of Singapore to assess their effectiveness among the university community, with promising results. The team now wanted to investigate whether the improved recycling habits observed on campus could be replicated in more diverse public environments, such as shopping malls. The decision for the team was how to implement a field trial of these bins across three shopping malls in Singapore to assess their effectiveness among the general population. The case underscored the importance of human and behavioural-centred design in promoting sustainable practices and discussed primary operational challenges, potential risks, and mitigation strategies to ensure a field study’s success.

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