The case opens in May 2018 with Nurtaç Ziyal Afridi, chief strategy and growth officer of Yıldız Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, reflecting on the group’s diversification journey. In ten years, the group had achieved a remarkable growth through diversification: seven mergers, 33 acquisitions, and 23 divestments. By 2018, it had 164 companies and consolidated revenues of $12 billion. After two notable acquisitions (Godiva, a $850-million deal in 2007, and United Biscuits, a $3.2-billion deal in 2014), Yıldız Holding became one of the world’s largest confectionary companies. However, Yıldız Holding’s owner, Murat Ülker, wanted it to be the number one or two player globally. To achieve this goal, Afridi started a major restructuring program to focus on the group’s core assets. That was not an easy feat. The group companies addressed mass market to luxury customers, and their portfolio of products ranged from confectionary to dairy, beverages, baby food, and olive oil. They had wholesaling operations as well as retailing businesses across a wide reach of geographies. Afridi’s decisions in restructuring needed to balance all the various trade-offs. She had to decide how to define core, and accordingly decide which non-core assets to divest. Should she consider protecting only wholesaling businesses and divesting retailing? And what about managing their businesses in different geographies? Would it be a good idea if the group were to manage some geographies directly and leave the management of others to select partners?
The case follows the Children Cancer Hospital in Egypt, also known as Hospital 57357, as it goes through the roll-out of a new performance management system, which Dr. Sherif Abouel Naga, founder and CEO of the hospital, had championed. This was a critical juncture as the largest pediatric cancer hospital in the world was transitioning from a traditional, relatively informal operating style to a performance management system that was tightly structured and data driven. Dr. Abouel Naga had tasked a newly assembled management team with defining a strategy to ensure that 57357 remained a world leader in quality healthcare for children with cancer in an evolving and uncertain market landscape. While Dr. Abouel Naga was confident that a system that measured each individual’s contribution to the strategy would make a difference in the overall performance of the organization, critics worried about how employees might respond to the tight structure that came with this system. How could they ensure there would still be plenty of room for creativity and innovation, which were so important in the delivery of care? Would the new system allow to adapt quickly to evolving market conditions without generating confusion among the staff?
The case opens in April 2020 with Sani Şener, CEO of TAV Airports, a vertically integrated regional airport operator headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, and his team discussing the pending acquisition of the Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan. The company had been looking for ways to increase its revenues, which had shrunk by 35% in 2019 after the closing of its flagship airport in Istanbul. The business case for acquiring Almaty International was quite strong: it was an asset acquisition with no maturity, and it came with fuel and cargo operations, functions that were unaffected by the cyclicality of passenger traffic. But the world had changed significantly since TAV made a conditional offer of $415 million, outbidding all other interested parties in November 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the aviation industry had been facing unprecedented challenges, and passenger traffic in Almaty had dropped by around 40%. In the meantime, the seller of Almaty International was undeterred and pressed TAV to close the deal. Şener and the senior management team were at a critical juncture: they had to move ahead soon or risk missing out on an opportunity that had looked very bright pre-pandemic.
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