African Tiger (B‪)‬

AWARD WINNING CASE - This case series won top prize in the 2010 Association of African Business Schools (AABS)/EMERALD case competition. In January 2007, Tiger Wheels (Tiger) and ATS informed its lead banker in Germany that it was forecasting a breach of its covenants, just 18 months after acquiring the Kentucky wheel plant. This was a critical matter and, as a result, the top management at Tiger was intimately involved in the deliberations. ATS had borrowed from a consortium of European banks to fund its growth. The borrowings were covenant driven and not set against any ATS assets. Under the loan agreement, the banks had the right to call in the loan if ATS were to breach one or more of the three covenants. The aim of the top management of Tiger and ATS was to win the confidence of the banking consortium by presenting a comprehensive strategy, including an action plan, which would restore ATS's financial health and make it compliant with its covenants once again. An African Tiger Case B is a part of An African Tiger case series, which includes A and B cases. The case series can be taught in the main strategy course of an MBA program to focus the discussion on the portfolio of competences within the resource-based view of the firm. The cases are also ideal for teaching an elective course on global strategy in MBA and executive programs. Ideally, case A and case B should be used in sequence over two sessions. In programs with time constraints, instructors could choose to use only case B as the case clearly brings out the issues of country differences and difficulties in transferring competences. In such situations, the instructor can distribute the summary of the case A from the teaching note along with case B. The important learning themes are: 1) the challenges in recognizing and developing new competences, 2) the limits of the control and influence of the majority owner in the execution of strategy, when the key competences reside with the minority shareholder and 3) the relationship between corporate response, managerial cognition, monitoring and divisional operations in a large company.