The case is based on Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), the second-largest broadband service provider in the territory in 2012. The young and dynamic company is growing at a faster pace than its competitors, and attributes this success to its innovative approach to Talent management, which involves attracting, developing, retaining, and rewarding its 3,080-strong Talent base. HKBN’s Talent enhancement programs are designed to drive strong individual, team, and organizational performance, inspiring a highly engaged workforce and a high-performance work culture across the organization.
In mid-2012, when HKBN’s parent company, City Telecom, sold HKBN and all related telecom businesses to a global private equity firm―CVC Capital Partners—it created a new challenge for NiQ Lai, head of Talent engagement and CFO. The new directive for NiQ was to lead HKBN to an initial public offering (IPO) in three to five years’ time. To do so, the key question was, how should the management team leverage its Talent base to maximize the value of the company?
 

The case is based on an actual challenge faced by Christie’s Hong Kong, the Hong Kong subsidiary of the renowned auction house. For its biannual auctions, the company needs to hire 200 to 300 temporary sales assistants and assign them to different positions on different days. The human resources team believes that the current manual process of hiring and assignment is labor intensive and is unable to cope with sudden changes. They are looking to streamline the process and use decision tools.

Cathay Capital Private Equity (Cathay) was started by Mingpo Cai and Edouard Moinet in 2007, at the brink of the global financial crisis. The firm initially opened offices in Shanghai and Paris, aiming to invest in fast-growing small and medium enterprises, either French companies looking to expand in China or Chinese companies seeking to move up the global supply chain in France.
By the end of 2012, Cathay closed a EUR350 million second fund, and, planned to move beyond France and China, by looking at other European countries and the United States for potential deals. With the growing competition of local private equity (PE) firms in China and the ongoing European debt crises, was the firm ready to replicate its business model in other geographical markets in the near future? What did the firm have to do to ensure success in the long run?

Dun’an Holding Group is a major Chinese conglomerate, employing more than 19,000 people in 90 companies. Its main business is in the heavily regulated civil explosives industry. Chinese government policies encourage both mergers between the various chemical companies producing explosives and companies along the industry value chain. By 2012, Dun’an had grown to a leading industry player through a series of mergers and acquisitions including a successful reverse merger with Anhui Jiangnan Chemical Industry Co. Ltd.

In the near future, the company wanted to build market share in West China, improve safety management and product mix, and strengthen the co-ordination of research, production, marketing and explosive service provision. The company also wanted to develop and strengthen strategic partnerships with large companies in the fields of mining and infrastructure development to create new profit growth through business model innovations. Top management had to decide how to make tradeoffs on decision making when taking into account geographical location, vertical integration, and product portfolio.