There has been a growing interest in fintech companies in recent years. The case describes how Privé Technologies has grown from a fintech startup to gain a firm foothold in Hong Kong and become a leading innovator in the financial and wealth management industries. The company was co-founded by Charles Wong and Julian Schillinger in 2011. The company uses modules similar to Lego building blocks to enable financial institutions to meet their customers' needs throughout the wealth management process, from customer onboarding, portfolio construction and recommendation to portfolio reporting and execution. With more than 100 staff and 6 offices in Asia and Europe, Privé has served over 60 financial institutions and its system has been used by over 3,000 financial advisors. This case study sheds light on how a fintech startup in Hong Kong can cope with different challenges and how to search and grasp growth opportunities and sell their products and services effectively.
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Neat, a fintech company based in Hong Kong, launched its first account in 2016 and has grown up over the years. The company now mainly serves startups and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) by offering credit cards, payment collection, remittance services and startup-tailored solutions. After the outbreak of COVID-19, many countries introduced travel restrictions, lock-down and social distancing measures which gave online businesses including Neat significant growth opportunities. Having successfully secured a US$11 million Series A funding in April and a further US$4 million in August 2020, David Rosa, CEO and co-founder of Neat, is contemplating the next stage of expansion. Should Neat focus on developing new products and services or on expanding the market reach and target developing countries or developed countries?
The case describes the business details of Neat, including company background, its products and services on offer and the different options available for its future development. The case helps students understand the different stages of corporate growth and the status quo of fintech companies in Asia. It provides a learning opportunity for students to analyze and discuss different growth strategies, and they will learn the different business environments fintech companies are facing in developing countries and developed countries.
The case, set in January 2019, deals with how KTZ Express (KTZE), wholly owned subsidiary of National Company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Joint-Stock Company (NC KTZ JSC or “KTZ”) which is the national railway company of Kazakhstan, handles its dry port operation. KTZE provides logistics services and multimodal transport using its network of warehouses, terminals and airport infrastructure and operates the largest dry port in Khorgos, Kazakhstan. The dry port was designed to serve as a logistics hub between China and Europe that allowed sorting cargo coming from different origins to its destinations by trains. Following the introduction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2013, there has been significant increase in KTZE’s business in Khorgos.
Despite a general increase in business since the announcement of BRI in 2013, the dry port is only operating at 25% of its designed capacity of 540,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units of standard size containers) in 2018, and the momentum of traffic growth has been slowing down from the previous years. Students take on the role of Ms. Gaukhar Akasheva, Managing managing Director director of KTZE, to explore how the dry port could possibly impact supply chain management in the region, the possibility to change the pattern of logistic flows between China and Europe for some industries, and too firmly establish Khorgos as the major logistics hub in the region. Students are required to devise an action plan on how to attract new traffic and business, and to develop an operating model for optimizing the utilization of the facility in the next four to five years.
This case is one of a series of cases that examines corporate governance in Hong Kong using the financial crises of 2008 that engulfed CITIC Pacific (now CITIC Limited) as the study. The first case dealt with the mechanics of the foreign exchange hedging which caused considerable losses at the company. The present case examines the governance structures at the start of the crisis, and how such structures have changed up to the present. There has been considerable change of the leadership at CITIC and new financial governance committee structures have been formed in order to manage risk. The case poses the question of whether such changes will prevent future challenges when operational and financial risks arise from cross-border activities. Finally, the case considers the role of the regulatory bodies that formulate the rules by which such companies have to operate. The case considers whether the standards that govern the activities of companies in an industry are adhered to or are viewed merely as guidelines since all the competitors are pursuing the same activity.
Over the past few decades, the market for used books had declined and many used bookstores around the world have closed. Sydney, Australia, where Ampersand Bookstore and Café was located, was no exception to this trend. Yet, Vangel Cvetkovski, co-owner and operator of Ampersand, has steered it towards financial success. Established as a bookstore café, a familiar environment accessible to most university students, this case examines how Vangel and his partner overcame the limitations of the used bookstore and café industries to create a hybrid business model and how they got it to work.
This case study, a companion case to "Ampersand Bookstore and Café (A): Surviving the Bookstore Apocalypse", extends the main case (A) by taking the Ampersand story further. While the main case focused mainly on how Ampersand had previously succeeded, this companion case examines how the protagonist might continue to grow and expand the business. Thus, it is suggested to be taught as an extension to the main case (A).
Link REIT, Asia’s largest real estate investment trust and the second largest of its kind globally, holds a position of infamy in Hong Kong, its headquarters and primary market. A decade on from its formation, which occurred through the divestiture of what were previously public retail assets, Link REIT has been both lauded by investors for its superior returns and vilified by the general public as an agent of the city’s gentrification. Critiques have raised two sets of allegations against Link REIT: that their approach to redeveloping the city’s public markets has made these spaces unaffordable to the poor, previously the markets’ principal patrons; and that many of the markets’ legacy vendors, themselves also often impoverished, have been forced to leave their businesses post-renovation, unable to afford refurbishment. Redeveloped wet markets are now more upmarket and almost European, with Link REIT targeting a decidedly more bourgeois patron. But at what cost to the city’s social fabric? And should this be a material concern?
The story’s protagonist, Calvin Kwan, is the General Manager of Sustainability at Link REIT and has spent his tenure attempting to demonstrate that sustainability has a place in the corporate boardroom. Now tasked with rethinking his company’s approach to managing these assets, Calvin must consider to whom Link REIT holds obligations and how outside approaches to urban redevelopment might generate sources of value that are both financially accretive and socially beneficial. Faced with heightened levels of public scrutiny, Link REIT’s response may shape their continued right to operate within the city.
As the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Huawei has been building telecommunications networks and services since its inception in 1987. Leveraging its close relationship with other telecommunications service providers, Huawei entered the consumer mobile devices market, supplying mobile phones and other white-label products for telecom service providers in the mid-2000s. In 2010, Huawei also began designing, manufacturing, and selling the first smartphones under its own brand, targeting middle-to-high-end consumer segments. By 2015, Huawei ranked first in China and third in the world in the smartphone market. By the first quarter of 2020, Huawei also became the largest smartphone vendor of the world, overtaking the title from Samsung for the first time. This case study explores the strategies that have resulted in Huawei’s fast to rise to the top in the consumer business even as many of its competitors scaled back their footprint.
In parallel, however, this remarkable success has been tinged with the challenges and headwinds faced by its telecom equipment business. In recent years, the company has been subject to increasing sanctions led by the US government related to some of its 5G telecom equipment business practices. In May 2020, the Trump Administration announced a new direct product rule (DPR) that effectively blocks Huawei's access to advanced semiconductors for all its products. Sanctions of this magnitude have put the company into crisis mode and has caused a rethinking of its supply and value chain strategies. This case highlights some lessons for Chinese companies as they attempt to globalize their brands and operations in a world that still perceives them as a threat. The case also highlights the need to evaluate supply and value chain risks from the strategic standpoint and not just an operational view. The case aims to foster discussion on how companies could formulate a proactive strategy to respond to and recover from geopolitical movements, coordinated competitive challenges, or even a systemic shock such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
This case explains how Dakota, a medium-sized garment maker headquartered in Hong Kong, built its sustainability program while serving a US$3 trillion industry that is the world’s second-largest polluter after oil. It explores the main drivers behind Dakota’s sustainability program – the relationship with its major customer, H&M; Dakota’s organic development of sustainability principles as it moved production from China to Cambodia and Myanmar, two rapidly developing but poor countries in Southeast Asia; and the evolving discourse over business ethics and the “triple bottom line” (TBL) challenging companies to meet performance metrics that include impact on social and environmental wellbeing as well as corporate growth.
This case study is based on a Hong Kong technology start-up, Morllex (Morllex is a disguised name of a real company), specializing in chemicals for the electronics industry. The company received substantial private funding, as well as funding from a government-backed incubation program, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. The three founders encountered conflicts in various strategies, including relationships with the two non-executive shareholders, several key suppliers such as a marketing consultant, and a China sales agent. There were substantial pressures to build sales and marketing traction and ensure timely delivery of the product to distributors.
Over two years, the three founders and two non-executive shareholders (all anonymized here) had nurtured Morllex from an award-winning concept to a market-ready product. Yet, the partners struggled to reach an agreement on some major decisions, such as whether to register the business in Shenzhen or Hong Kong. Also, the partners had an ongoing debate about whether to manage marketing and distribution in-house or to outsource it. One partner favored the former option while the other partners had a different point of view. These conflicts left the founders questioning the future of a company in which they had believed so strongly and invested so much time and energy.
In this case study, students will play the roles of the founders and shareholders. The case is designed to set up conflicts among the players to teach students how hostile team dynamics can make inherently solvable problems intractable.