Cases in International Finance
A Collection of Cases
Compiled by Michael H. Moffet
Cases in International
Finance offers students a first-hand look at the challenges and developments in the field
of inter- national finance. The cases present a rich array of topics, including currency
exposure, international performance evaluation, ratio analysis, mergers and acquisitions,
and multinational capital budgeting, to name just a few. Each case was individually
selected after being extensively field tested in undergraduate, graduate, and executive
education programs. The authors of these cases reside at some of the leading educational
institutions in the world, each providing significant insight into his or her area of
expertise.
The growth of international
business continues to know no bounds. With the coming of the year 20DD, the worlds access
to information technology-and to capital-Yias reaffirmed the need to explore and
expand our understanding of international finance. Finance is integral to the conduct of
global business, and the increasing access to capital by enterprises and institutions from
Bangalore to Beijing, is giving rise to competitors which many multinational firms in
traditional industrial markets have not yet seen on their radar screens. As a recent
slogan on the Internet noted, "The future is here, it is simply not evenly
distributed."
This collection of cases in
international finance is intended to provide current material for the exploration of these
global financial challenges and trends. These cases are the product of academics from some
of the leading educational institutions in the world in the fields of international
business, generally, and international finance, specifically. Many of the cases have
benefitted from extensive co-authorship with the practitioners in the field, the
professional financial managers who are on the front lines of global business. Many of
these same professionals are our former students, who (thankfully for us) continue to
reeducate us, the educators.
The key words in the
selection of cases for this collection were currency (timing of case events, not money)
and diversity (geographic, not ethnic). Twenty-seven of the 30 cases involve events
occurring in the 1990s, with ten cases in the period of time between 1997 and 2000 alone.
To our knowledge, this is also the first major financial case collection in which the
majority of the case events occur outside of the United States. This geographic diversity
includes Pakistan, Italy, Honduras, China, Denmark, Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, and Ecuador
to name but a few. As the leaders in international business and finance have reiterated
time and time again over the past 30 years, global business and financial practices
reflect much of the culture and history of the geographic environments. It is hoped that
this case collection provides an opportunity for students of international finance to
understand the differences and complexity of international financial management on a truly
global landscape.
Topical coverage is wide. In
addition to the traditional international financial issues of currency exposure and global
funding, topics of contemporary managerial concern such as international performance
evaluation, valuation and recapitalization, mergers and acquisitions, global tax
management, remittance and repatriation, pricing, project financing, ratio analysis, and
multinational capital budgeting are also covered. Few if any of the cases are confined to
a single topic; most cases present the complexity of financial decision-making within a
competitive business environment. The challenges presented by these cases are intended to
go far beyond simple exercises in financial mathematics, to real world financial issues
faced by real world managers in real world companies.
The organization of the
collection follows that of Multinational Business Finance (MBF), ninth edition, 2001,
Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing, coauthored by David Eiteman, Arthur Stonehill, and
myself. It is intended that the casebook be used as a supplement to MBF, but also as a
supplement to a traditional financial management text, or independently on a stand-alone
basis. Although the title of the collection is International Finance, each case could be
viewed as focusing on a variety of financial dimensions of global business in general. The
selection of cases for the volume was intended to expand the scope of international
finance, not narrow it.
These cases have been
extensively field-tested in both undergraduate and graduate level degree programs at a
variety of educational institutions around the globe, as well as within a variety of
executive education programs, including here at Thunderbird. I wish to thank all the
authors for allowing me to use their cases, several of whom have revised in their cases
specifically for this volume. Thank you. And of course, any remaining errors of content or
omission are mine alone.
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