case study report about financial problem

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Finance Case Studies

Featured finance case studies:.

Canary Wharf: Financing and Placemaking

Fondaco dei Tedeschi: A New Luxury Shopping Destination for Venice

Nathan Cummings Foundation: Mission-Driven Investing

The Decline of Malls

Expand the sections below to read more about each case study:, nathan cummings foundation, ellie campion, dwayne edwards, brad wayman, anna williams, william goetzmann, and jean rosenthal.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Social Enterprise, Sourcing/Managing Funds

The Nathan Cummings Foundation Investment Committee and Board of Trustees had studied the decision to go “all in” on a mission-related investment approach. The Board voted 100% to support this new direction and new goals for financial investments, but many questions remained. How could NCF operationalize and integrate this new strategy? What changes would it need to make to support the investment strategies' long-term success? How could NCF measure and track its progress and success with this new strategy?

William Goetzmann, Jean Rosenthal, Jaan Elias, Edoardo Pasinato, Lukas Cejnar, Ellie Campion

Business History, Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds, State & Society

The renovation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice represented a grand experiment. Should an ancient building in the midst of a world heritage site be transformed into a modern mall for luxury goods? How best to achieve the transformation and make it economically sustainable? Would tourists walk to the mall? And would they buy or just look? What could each stakeholder learn from their experiences with the Fondaco dei Tedeschi?

Gardner Denver

James quinn, adam blumenthal, and jaan elias.

Asset Management, Employee/HR, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

As KKR, a private equity firm, prepared to take Gardner-Denver, one of its portfolio companies, public in mid-2017, a discussion arose on the Gardner-Denver board about the implications of granting approximately $110 million in equity to its global employee base as part of its innovative "broad-based employee ownership program." Was the generous equity package that Pete Stavros proposed be allotted to 6,100 employees the wisest move and the right timing for Gardner Denver and its new shareholders?

Home Health Care

Jean rosenthal, jaan elias, adam blumenthal, and jeremy kogler.

Asset Management, Competitor/Strategy, Healthcare, Investor/Finance

Blue Wolf Capital Partners was making major investments in the home health care sector. The private equity fund had purchased two U.S. regional companies in the space. The plan was to merge the two organizations, creating opportunities for shared expertise and synergies in reducing management costs. Two years later, the management team was considering adding a third company. Projected revenues for the combined organization would top $1 billion annually. What was the likelihood that this opportunity would succeed?

Suwanee Lumber Company

Jaan elias, adam blumenthal, james shovlin, and heather e. tookes.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Sustainability

In 2016, Blue Wolf, a private equity firm headquartered in New York City, confronted a number of options when it came to its lumber business. They could put their holdings in the Suwanee Lumber Company (SLC), a sawmill they had purchased in 2013, up for sale. Or they could continue to hold onto SLC and run it as a standalone business. Or they could double down on the lumber business by buying an idle mill in Arkansas to run along with SLC.

Alternative Meat Industry: How Should Beyond Meat be Valued?

Nikki springer, leon van wyk, jacob thomas, k. geert rouwenhorst and jaan elias.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds, Sustainability

In 2009, when experienced entrepreneur Ethan Brown decided to build a better veggie burger, he set his sights on an exceptional goal – create a plant-based McDonald’s equally beloved by the American appetite. To do this, he knew he needed to transform the idea of plant-based meat alternatives from the sleepy few veggie burger options in the grocer’s freezer case into a fundamentally different product. Would further investments in research and development help give Beyond Meat an edge? Would Americans continue to embrace meat alternatives, or would the initial fanfare subside below investor expectations?

Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

Jean rosenthal, geert rouwenhorst, jacob thomas, allen xu.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Sourcing/Managing Funds

By 2019, Hertz CEO Kathyrn Marinello and CFO Jamere Jackson had managed to streamline the venerable car rental firm's operations. Their next steps were to consider ways to fine-tune Hertz's capital structure. Would it make sense for Marinello and Jackson to lead Hertz to issue more equity to re-balance the structure? One possibility was a stock rights offering, but an established company issuing equity was not generally well-received by investors. How well would the market respond to an attempt by Hertz management to increase shareholder equity?

Twining-Hadley Incorporated

Jaan elias, k geert rouwenhorst, jacob thomas.

Employee/HR, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, Sourcing/Managing Funds

Jessica Austin has been asked to compute THI's Weighted Average Cost of Capital, a key measure for making investments and deciding executive compensation. What should she consider in making her calculation?

Shake Shack IPO

Vero bourg-meyer, jaan elias, jake thomas and geert rouwenhorst.

Competitor/Strategy, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Sourcing/Managing Funds, Sustainability

Shake Shack's long lines of devoted fans made investors salivate when the company went public in 2015 and shares soared above expectations. Was the enthusiasm justified? Could the company maintain its edge in the long run?

Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

Jean rosenthal, william n. goetzmann, olav sorenson, andrew ang, and jaan elias.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds

Norway's Pension Fund Global was the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. With questions in 2014 on policies, ethical investment, and other concerns, what was the appropriate investment strategy for the Fund?

Factor Investing for Retirement

Jean rosenthal, jaan elias and william goetzmann.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance

Should this investor look for a portfolio of factor funds to meet his goals for his 401(k) Retirement Plan?

Bank of Ireland

Jean w. rosenthal, eamonn walsh, matt spiegel, will goetzmann, david bach, damien p. mcloughlin, fernando fernandez, gayle allard, and jaan elias.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Macroeconomics, State & Society

In August 2011, Wilbur Ross, an American investor specializing in distressed and bankrupt companies, purchased 35% of the stock of Bank of Ireland. Even for Ross, investing in an Irish bank seemed risky. Observers wondered if the investment made sense.

Commonfund ESG

Jaan elias, sarah friedman hersh, maggie chau, logan ashcraft, and pamela jao.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, Social Enterprise

ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) investing had become an increasingly hot topic in the financial community. Could Commonfund offer its endowment clients some investment vehicle that would satisfy ESG concerns while producing sufficient returns?

Glory, Glory Man United!

Charles euvhner, jacob thomas, k. geert rouwenhorst, and jaan elias.

Competitor/Strategy, Employee/HR, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Sourcing/Managing Funds

Manchester United might be the greatest English sports dynasty of all time. But valuation poses unique challenges. How much should a team's success on the pitch count toward its net worth?

Walmart de México: Investing in Renewable Energy

Jean rosenthal, k. geert rouwenhorst, isabel studer, jaan elias, and juan carlos rivera.

Investor/Finance, Operations, State & Society, Sustainability

Walmart de México y Centroamérica contracted for power from EVM's wind farm, saving energy costs and improving sustainability. What should the company's next steps be to advance its goals?

Voltaire, Casanova, and 18th-Century Lotteries

Jean rosenthal and william n. goetzmann.

Business History, State & Society

Gambling has been a part of human activity since earliest recorded history, and governments have often attempted to turn that impulse to benefit the state.  The development of lotteries in the 18th century helped to develop the study of probabilities and enabled the financial success of some of the leading figures of that era.

Alexander Hamilton and the Origin of American Finance

Andrea nagy smith, william goetzmann, and jeffrey levick.

Business History, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance

Alexander Hamilton is said to have invented the future. At a time when the young United States of America was disorganized and bankrupt, Hamilton could see that the nation would become a powerful economy.

Kmart Bankruptcy

Jean rosenthal, heather tookes, henry s. miller, and jaan elias.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance

Less than 18 months after Kmart entered Chapter 11, the company emerged and its stocked soared. Why had the chain entered Chapter 11 in the first place and how had the bankruptcy process allowed the company to right itself?

Oil, ETFs, and Speculation

So alex roelof, k. geert rouwenhorst, and jaan elias.

Since the markets' origins, traders sought standardized wares to increase market liquidity. In the 1960s and later, they sought assets uncorrelated to traditional bonds and equities. By late 2004, commodity-based exchange-traded securities emerged.

Newhall Ranch Land Parcel

Acquired by a partnership of two closely intertwined homebuilders, Newhall Ranch was the last major tract of undeveloped land in Los Angeles County in 2003.

Brandeis and the Rose Museum

Arts Management, Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Social Enterprise, Sourcing/Managing Funds

The question of the role museums should play in university life became urgent for Brandeis in early 2009. Standard portfolios of investments had just taken a beating. Given that environment, should Brandeis sell art in order to save its other programs?

Taking EOP Private

Allison mitkowski, william goetzmann, and jaan elias.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

With 594 properties nationwide, EOP was the nation’s largest office landlord.  Despite EOP's dominance of the REIT market, analysts had historically undervalued EOP. However, Blackstone saw something in EOP that the analysts didn’t, and in November, Blackstone offered to buy EOP for $48.50 per share. What did Blackstone and Vornado see that the market didn’t?

Subprime Lending Crisis

Jaan elias and william n. goetzmann.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, State & Society

To understand the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, we look at a failing Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) and then drill down to look at a single loan that has gone bad.

William N. Goetzmann, Jean Rosenthal, and Jaan Elias

Asset Management, Business History, Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds, State & Society

The financial engineering of London's Canary Wharf was as impressive as the structural engineering. However, Brexit and the rise of fintech represented new challenges. Would financial firms leave the U.K.? Would fintech firms seek new kinds of space? How should the Canary Wharf Group respond?

The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

Jean rosenthal, anna williams, brandon colon, robert park, william goetzmann, jessica helfand  .

Business History, Customer/Marketing, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance

Shopping malls became the "Main Street" of US suburbs beginning in the mid-20th century. But will they persist into the 21st?

Hirtle Callaghan & Co

James quinn, jaan elias, and adam blumenthal.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

In August 2019, Stephen Vaccaro, Yale MBA ‘03, became the director of private equity at Hirtle, Callaghan & Co., LLC (HC), a leading investment management firm associated with pioneering the outsourced chief investment office (OCIO) model for college endowments, foundations, and wealthy families. Vaccaro was tasked with spearheading efforts to grow HC’s private equity (PE) market value from $1 billion to a new target of roughly $3 billion in order to contribute to the effort of generating higher long-term returns for clients. Would investment committees overseeing endowments typically in the 10s or 100s of millions embrace this shift, and, more pointedly, was this the best move for client portfolios?

The Federal Reserve Response to 9-11

Jean rosenthal, william b. english, jaan elias.

Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, State & Society

The attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, shocked the nation and the world. The attacks crippled the nerve center of the U.S. financial system. Information flow among banks, traders in multiple markets, and regulators was interrupted. Under Roger Ferguson's leadership, the Federal Reserve made a series of decisions designed to provide confidence and increase liquidity in a severely damaged financial system. In hindsight, were these the best approaches? Were there other options that could have taken place?

Suwanee Lumber Company (B)

In early 2018, Blue Wolf Capital Management received an offer to sell both its mill in Arkansas (Caddo) and its mill in Florida (Suwanee) to Conifex, an upstart Canadian lumber company. Blue Wolf hadn’t planned to put both mills up for sale yet, but was the deal too good to pass up? Blue Wolf had invested nearly $36.5 million into rehabilitating the Suwanee and Caddo mills. However, neither was fully operational yet. Did the offer price fairly value the prospects of the mills? How should Blue Wolf consider the Conifex stock? Should Blue Wolf conduct a more extensive sales process rather than settle for this somewhat unexpected offer?

Occidental Petroleum's Acquisition of Anadarko

Jaan elias, piyush kabra, jacob thomas, k. geert rouwenhorst.

Asset Management, Competitor/Strategy, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In May of 2019, Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), pulled off a blockbuster. Bidding against Chevron, one of the world's largest oil firms, she had managed to buy Anadarko, another oil company that was roughly the size of Oxy. Hollub believed that the combination of the two firms brought the possibility for billions of dollars in synergies, more than offsetting the cost of the acquisition. Had Hollub hurt shareholder value with Oxy's ambitious deal, or had she bolstered a mid-size oil firm and made it a major player in the petroleum industry? Why didn't investors see the tremendous synergies in which Hollub fervently believed?

Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

In 2019, Hertz held a successful rights offering and restructured some of its debt. CEO Kathyrn Marinello and CFO Jamere Jackson were moving the company toward what seemed to be sustainable profitability, having implemented major structural and financial reforms. Analysts predicted a rosy future. Travel, particularly corporate travel, was increasing as the economy grew. With all the creativity that the company had shown in its financial arrangements, did it have any options remaining, even while under the court-led reorganization?

Prodigy Finance

Vero bourg-meyer, javier gimeno, jaan elias, florian ederer.

Competitor/Strategy, Investor/Finance, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

Having pioneered a successful financing model for student loans, Prodigy also was considering other financial services that could make use of the company’s risk model. What new products could Prodigy offer to support its student borrowers? What strategy should guide the company’s new product development? Or should the company stick to the educational loans it pioneered and knew best?

tronc: Valuing the Future of Newspapers

Jean rosenthal, heather e. tookes, and jaan elias.

Business History, Competitor/Strategy, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

Gannet offered Tribune Publishing an all-cash buyout offer. Tribune then made a strategic pivot: new stock listing, new name "tronc," and a goal of posting 1,000 videos/day. Should the Tribune board take the buyout opportunity? What was the right price?

Role of Hedge Funds in Institutional Portfolios: Florida Retirement System

Jaan elias, william goetzmann and lloyd baskin.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, State & Society

The Florida Retirement System, one of the country’s largest state pensions, had been slow to embrace hedge funds, but by 2015, they had 7% of their assets in the category. How should they manage their program?

Social Security 1935

Jean rosenthal, william n. goetzmann, and jaan elias.

Business History, Financial Regulation, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, State & Society

Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, shaped the Social Security Act of 1935, changing America’s pension landscape. What might she have done differently?

Ant Financial: Flourishing Farmer Loans at MYbank

Jingyue xu, jean rosenthal, k. sudhir, hua song, xia zhang, yuanfang song, xiaoxi liu, and jaan elias.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Operations, State & Society

In 2015 Ant Financial's MYbank (an offshoot of Jack Ma’s Alibaba company) created the Flourishing Farmer Loan program, an all-internet banking service for China's rural areas. Could MYbank use financial technology to create a program with competitive costs and risk management?

Low-Carbon Investing: Commonfund & GPSU

Jaan elias, william goetzmann, and k. geert rouwenhorst.

Asset Management, Ethics & Religion, Investor/Finance, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

In August of 2014, the movement to divest fossil fuel investments from endowment portfolios was sweeping campuses across the United States, including Gifford Pinchot State University (GPSU). How should GPSU and its investment partner Commonfund react?

360 State Street: Real Options

Andrea nagy smith and mathew spiegel.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, Sourcing/Managing Funds

360 State Street proved successful, but what could Bruce Becker construct on the 6,000-square-foot vacant lot at the southwest corner of the project? Under what set of circumstances and at what time would it be most advantageous to proceed? Or should he build anything at all?

Centerbridge

Jean rosenthal and olav sorensen.

When Jeffrey Aronson and Mark Gallogly founded Centerbridge, they hoped to grow the firm, but not to a point that it would lose its culture. Having added an office in London, could the firm add more locations and maintain its collegial character?

George Hudson and the 1840s Railway Mania

Andrea nagy smith, james chanos, and james spellman.

Business History, Financial Regulation, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data

Railways were one of the original disruptive technologies: they transformed England from an island of slow, agricultural villages into a fast, urban, industrialized nation.  George Hudson was the central figure in the mania for railroad shares in England. After the share value crashed, some analysts blamed Hudson, others pointed to irrational investors and still others maintained the crash was due to macroeconomic factors.

Demosthenes and Athenian Finance

Andrea nagy smith and william goetzmann.

Business History, Financial Regulation, Law & Contracts

Demosthenes' Oration 35, "Against Lacritus," contains the only surviving maritime loan contract from the fourth century B.C., proving that the ancient Greeks had devised a commercial code to link the economic lives of people from all over the Greek world.   Athenians and non-Athenians alike came to the port of Piraeus to trade freely.

South Sea Bubble

Frank newman and william goetzmann.

Business History, Financial Regulation

The story of the South Sea Company and its seemingly absurd stock price levels always enters into conversations about modern valuation bubbles.  Because of its modern application, discerning what was at the root of the world's first stock market crash merits considerable attention. What about the South Sea Company and the political, economic and social context in which it operated led to its stunning collapse?

Jean W. Rosenthal, Jaan Elias, William N. Goetzmann, Stanley Garstka, and Jacob Thomas

Asset Management, Healthcare, Investor/Finance, Sourcing/Managing Funds, State & Society

A centerpiece of the 2007 contract negotiations between the UAW and GM - and later with Chrysler and Ford - was establishing a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) to provide for retiree healthcare costs. The implications were substantial.

Northern Pulp: A Private Equity Firm Resurrects a Troubled Paper Company

Heather tookes, peter schott, francesco bova, jaan elias and andrea nagy smith.

Investor/Finance, Macroeconomics, State & Society, Sustainability

In 2008, the lumber industry was in a severe recession, yet Blue Wolf Capital Management was considering investment in a paper mill in Nova Scotia. How should they proceed?

Lahey Clinic: North Shore Expansion

Jaan elias, andrea r. nagy, jessica p. strauss, and william n. goetzmann.

Asset Management, Financial Regulation, Healthcare, Investor/Finance

In early 2007 the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts believed that expansion of its North Shore facility was not only a smart strategy but also a business necessity.  The two years of turmoil in the Massachusetts health care market prompted observers to question Lahey's 2007 decisions. Did the expansion strategy still make sense?

Carry Trade ETF

K. geert rouwenhorst, jean w. rosenthal, and jaan elias.

Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Macroeconomics, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In 2006 Deutsche Bank (DB) brought a new product to market – an exchange traded fund (ETF) based on the carry trade, a strategy of buying and selling currency futures. The offering received the William F. Sharpe Indexing Achievement Award for “Most Innovative Index Fund or ETF” at the 2006 Sharpe Awards. These awards are presented annually by IndexUniverse.com and Information Management Network for innovative advances in the indexing industry. The carry trade ETF shared the award with another DB/PowerShares offering, a Commodity Index Tracking Fund. Jim Wiandt, publisher of IndexUniverse.com, said, "These innovators are shaping the course of the index industry, creating new tools and providing new insights for the benefit of all investors." What was it that made this financial innovation successful?

William Goetzmann and Jaan Elias

Asset Management, Business History

Hawara is the site of the massive pyramid of Amenemhat III, a XII Dynasty [Middle Kingdom, 1204 – 1604 B.C.E.] pharaoh.  The Hawara Labyrinth and Pyramid Complex present a wealth of information about the Middle Kingdom.  Among its treasures are papyri covering property rights and transfers of ownership.

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The fishy death of Red Lobster

Endless Shrimp didn't sink the seafood chain. Wall Street did.

With the chain on the verge of bankruptcy, it has become abundantly clear that Red Lobster letting customers eat all the shrimp their hearts desire was not a great business idea . It's also not the reason the restaurant is in a deep financial mess .

In mid-April, Bloomberg reported the debt-laden seafood chain and home of beloved cheddar biscuits was considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Red Lobster is being bogged down by increased labor costs and expensive leases on its restaurants. Some observers were quick to blame the financial woes on its decision last year to make its "Endless Shrimp" promotion, which used to be an occasional, limited-time offering, permanent. The move was not a smart one. While Red Lobster increased traffic somewhat, people coming in to chow down on all-you-can-eat shrimp was a money bleeder. The company blamed Endless Shrimp for its $11 million losses in the third quarter of 2023, and in the fourth quarter, the picture got even worse, with the restaurant chain seeing $12.5 million in operating losses.

But the story about what's gone wrong with Red Lobster is much more complicated than a bunch of stoners pigging out on shrimp (and, later, lobster ) en masse. The brand has been plagued by various problems — waning customer interest, constant leadership turnover, and, as has become a common tale, private equity's meddling in the business.

"If anything, the Endless Shrimp deals are probably as much a symbol of just either desperation or poor management or both," Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of Restaurant Business Magazine, said.

Red Lobster first opened in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968 and was acquired by the food conglomerate General Mills in 1970. General Mills then spun the chain off in 1995 along with the rest of its restaurant division, which also included Olive Garden, as Darden Restaurants. In 2014, amid flagging sales and pressure from investors, Darden sold Red Lobster for $2.1 billion to Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco private-equity firm.

If anything, the Endless Shrimp deals are probably as much a symbol of just either desperation or poor management or both.

To raise enough cash to make the deal happen, Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster's real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back. The next year, Red Lobster bought back some sites, but many of its restaurants were suddenly strapped with added rent expenses. Even if Darden had kept Red Lobster, it's not clear it would have taken a different route: A press release from the time says it had contacted buyers to explore such a transaction. But in Maze's view, the sale of the real estate was sort of an original sin for Red Lobster's current troubles. He compared it to throwing out a spare parachute — chances are, you'll be OK, but if the first parachute fails, you're in deep trouble.

"The thing that private equity does is just unload assets and monetize assets. And so they effectively paid for the purchase of Red Lobster by selling the real estate," he said. "It'll probably be fine, generally, but there's going to come a time in which your sales fall, your profitability is challenged, and your debt looks too bad, and then suddenly those leases are going to look awfully ugly."

That time, according to recent reporting, is now. With struggling sales and operational losses, the leases are an added headache that is helping push the company to the brink, though bankruptcy may help Red Lobster get some wiggle room on them.

Eileen Appelbaum, a codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank, and a longtime private-equity critic, said in 2014 that private equity wouldn't be the solution to Red Lobster's ills. She isn't surprised about how this is all turning out.

"Once they sell the real estate, then the private-equity company is golden, and they've made their money back and probably more than what they paid," she said, noting that this was a common theme in other restaurants and retailers and adding: "The retail apocalypse is all about having your real estate sold out from under you so that you have to pay the rent in good times and in bad."

After the real estate move, Golden Gate sold 25% of the company in 2016 to Thai Union, a Thailand seafood company, for $575 million and unloaded the rest of the company to an investor group called the Seafood Alliance, of which Thai Union was a part, in 2020. Golden Gate likely came out ahead, but the same can't be said for Thai Union, which also controls the Chicken of the Sea brand. It is now looking to get out of its stake in Red Lobster and took a one-time charge of $530 million on its investment in the fourth quarter of last year. In 2021, Red Lobster refinanced its debt, with one of its new lenders being Fortress Investment Group, an investment-management group and private-equity firm. According to Bloomberg, it's one of the "key lenders" involved in debt negotiations now.

Beyond the pandemic-related troubles that hit restaurants across the country , analysts and experts say that Red Lobster's particular problems are attributable to a mix of poor brand positioning and unstable leadership. The seafood-restaurant business is a tough one in the US, and people who are hankering for lobster or fish are increasingly going to steak houses that offer those options, said Darren Tristano, the CEO and founder of Foodservice Results, a food-industry consultancy.

"What's truly happened with Red Lobster is that the consumer base has changed and Red Lobster hasn't," he said. "Red Lobster isn't losing to a competitor in their space — they're losing to competitors outside their space."

John Gordon, a restaurant analyst in San Diego, said Red Lobster had been on the decline for 20 years but that it didn't "fall on the knife" until Thai Union got it. "They were totally unprepared to hold a casual-dining restaurant," he said. Kim Lopdrup, Red Lobster's longtime CEO, retired in 2021, and since then, the restaurant hasn't had much in the way of stable leadership. His successor resigned after only a matter of months, and the role remained vacant for more than a year before someone else was appointed. He's left, too, and now Jonathan Tibus, an expert in restructuring, is at the helm.

"One of the problems is that Thai Union just had no credibility in terms of recruiting a new CEO," Gordon said.

Essentially, Red Lobster finds itself in a landscape where there just aren't a lot of bright spots. Add on the weight of the debt and lease obligations the company's private-equity owners saddled the brand with, and a turnaround becomes a gargantuan task.

"It's hard to blame leadership when you have a problem that is unsolvable — I mean, getting the consumer back in the door, increasing traffic. All-you-can-eat shrimp can only do so much," Tristano said.

Red Lobster did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Golden Gate declined to comment. Thai Union pointed to a press release about its intention to exit its investment and said it didn't wish to comment further.

One bad promotion should not doom a restaurant chain like that.

As to what drove Red Lobster to the edge, it's clear that despite not being a very good idea, the blame doesn't fall on Endless Shrimp. Years of changing tastes, tough industry conditions, and poor brand management all contributed to the chain's difficult position. But plenty of other restaurants have faced similar issues and aren't on the verge of bankruptcy. What separates Red Lobster is a decade of private-equity and investor tampering. Pinging from owner to owner makes it hard to settle on a turnaround vision. The company faces challenges that necessitate a long-term view that requires patience — the kind that the short-term-focused Wall Street often struggles to tackle. Whether Red Lobster can turn it around from here remains to be seen: Even if it files for bankruptcy protection, the chain may not disappear. Plenty of companies go bankrupt and keep on keeping on.

"You've got to at least be able to pay your bills, and what's happened over the last five years is the cost of operating a restaurant has taken off," Maze said. "One bad promotion should not doom a restaurant chain like that."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

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Analytics transformation in wealth management

The wealth management industry is typically seen as embodying old-fashioned values and providing discrete, tailored services. These attributes remain valuable parts of the business, but for many clients, they are no longer sufficient. In a highly connected world, people want faster and more convenient offerings and a cutting-edge digital experience. Amid rising competition, established wealth managers need to keep pace with new offerings as they retain the values that set them apart.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Anutosh Banerjee , Fumiaki Katsuki , Vishal Kaushik, Aditya Saxena, Sanchit Suneja, and Renny Thomas .

Wealth managers are unlikely to be able to serve modern clients effectively without a digitized operating model. This will support advisory and non-advisory activities and service everchanging investment preferences. Some leading managers are building modular data and IT architectures, which enable smart decision-making, personalization at scale, and more extensive product offerings. 1 For an in-depth look at how some of these elements are being developed in an overall banking context, see our collection “ Building the AI bank of the future ,” May 2021, mckinsey.com. The changes are also helping them meet their regulatory obligations, boosting the productivity of relationship managers (RMs), and lifting compressed margins.

For wealth managers interested in pursuing these benefits, this article lays out the potential of deploying advanced analytics and offers a playbook of measures that wealth managers should consider including in a digital transformation.

The case for advanced analytics

Meeting the needs of today’s customers requires a business model that is at the same time efficient and adaptable to individual clients. Wealth managers are finding success with two approaches:

• Serve clients across the wealth continuum on a flat-fee advisory basis. Instead of the still-prevalent product-focused model, wealth managers need to build in pricing flexibility aligned to clients’ needs at every stage of their lives. An increasingly common pricing model is for clients to negotiate a flat fee based on the value of their investments. To maintain revenues with this model, wealth managers need to create new efficiencies and ensure RMs are more productive, which means spending more time with clients.
• Embrace personalization aligned to client life stages and goals. Today’s customers are increasingly dissatisfied with a one-size-fits-all service model, so wealth managers should consider transitioning to needs-based personalization. This requires RMs to get comfortable with a wider range of solutions, from the simplest products to complex higher-yielding investments (private markets, venture capital, pre-IPO, and structured products). In addition, RMs must be equipped to help clients make complex investment decisions, supported by analytics.

In today’s context, each of these goals is achievable only with advanced capabilities in data and analytics, especially targeting relationship management.

Focus on relationship management

Modernization can be game changing when it targets the role of RMs. Based on conversations with industry participants, we estimate that RMs typically spend 60 to 70 percent of their time on non-revenue-generating activities, amid rising regulatory and compliance obligations (Exhibit 1). One reason is that most still work with legacy IT systems or even spreadsheets. As clients demand more engagement and remote channel options, that needs to change.

A few leading wealth managers are using technology to provide RMs with the tools to serve clients more efficiently and effectively. Some have taken a zero-based approach, rebuilding their tech stacks and embracing advanced analytics to inform more personalized services. By providing targeted solutions, these firms have been able to boost revenues and reduce operational costs.

Clear benefits of being more client focused

The benefits of digitization are relevant in most markets, but the potential to leverage digitization to achieve a significant performance uplift is especially great in regions where wealth managers have not yet seized the opportunity. In Asia, for example, many wealth managers still need to fully embrace digital ways of working (Exhibit 2). We estimate that IT-based transformations could create some $40 billion to $45 billion of incremental value for wealth managers serving high-net-worth individuals in Asia, equating to roughly 25 basis points on a wealth pool of $17 trillion. 2 Wealth management penetration in the region is 35 to 40 percent, but for the purposes of the calculation, we assume 100 percent of high-networth individuals’ personal financial assets (investable assets of more than $1 million).

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Drilling down in the potential gains from data and analytics, we see benefits in three key areas: acquisition and onboarding, engagement and deepening of client relationships, and servicing and retention.

Acquisition and onboarding. Basic acquisition and onboarding applications include client discovery, risk profiling, account opening, and onboarding. RMs and investment teams can use analytics for lead generation, share-of-wallet modeling, and automated proposals. There are also multiple applications in investment management, risk, and compliance, including social-profile checking, anti-money-laundering and know your customer, and fraud protection.

How analytics creates sustainable impact: Two examples from Asia

One leading Asian wealth manager deployed an analytics-led program to produce granular client insights that enabled it to offer responsive, timely, and personalized services to client microsegments. The bank leveraged personalization at scale to boost assets under management by 30 to 40 percent per client in six to eight months.

A second wealth manager created the position of chief investment officer to inform a bankwide view of asset classes and geographies. The CIO used analytics to link product selection to the “house view,” ensuring consistency across model portfolios.

Engagement and deepening. Client-focused applications include personalized research, portfolio management, and notifications. RMs and investment teams can implement client clustering, propensity modeling, recommendation engines, and digital performance management (see sidebar “How analytics creates sustainable impact: Two examples from Asia”). In investment management, risk, and compliance, there are opportunities to de-bias investment decisions, data analysis, and trade execution.

Servicing and retention. Client-related applications include portfolio simulations and optimization, as well as self-execution of trades. RMs can leverage applications such as churn predictors and work planners, while investment management, risk, and compliance can scale up portfolio planning and trade surveillance.

A playbook for analytics-driven wealth management

Early success stories are encouraging, but they are the exception rather than the rule. More often, firms have started the transformation journey but have faltered along the way. Common reasons include a lack of ownership at senior levels and budgetary or strategic restraints that prevent project teams from executing effectively.

The challenges of transforming service models are significant but not insurmountable. Indeed, as analytics use cases become more pervasive, implementation at scale becomes more achievable. In the following paragraphs, we present five ingredients of an analytics-based transformation (Exhibit 3). These can be supported by strong leadership, a rigorous focus on outcomes, and a willingness to embrace new ways of working. Indeed, managers who execute effectively will get ahead of the competition and be much more adept in meeting client needs.

Set a leadership vision

Analytics-driven transformations are often restricted to narrow silos occupied by a few committed experts. As a result, applications fail to pick up enough momentum to make a real difference to performance. Conversely, if support for change programs comes from the top and is guided by an outcomes-driven approach, the business can break away from entrenched operating norms and reset for structural change. With that in mind, executive teams should communicate a vision that can be cascaded through the business. They should also create a safe environment, or sandbox, for business lines to experiment before scaling.

Plot the change journey

Wealth managers have applied advanced analytics to achieving different objectives. Some have found that the application of advanced analytics to business problems delivers significant value and enables them to make better decisions faster and more consistently. Others are using data and advanced analytics to improve sales and marketing, inform investment decision-making, and boost RM productivity.

Any plan for data-driven change must fit the organization’s business model. Implementation will vary based on the technical feasibility, data accuracy and accessibility, time to impact, scalability, and availability of funds. The first few use cases will set the mood and direction, so careful thought is required ahead of action.

One common impediment to scaling is the lack of a single metric to describe impact, which makes it hard for tech teams to communicate benefits. Still, there are workarounds. Financial key performance indicators (KPIs) can show flows across key mandates or volumes of advisory, rather than execution-driven assets under management. Nonfinancial metrics can focus on cross-sell ratios, increased client retention, number of RMs trained, or adoption rates for solutions. Other helpful evaluations include customer satisfaction scores, new trust-based RM-client relationships, time to market, and cultural shifts. Progress on these measures will boost organizational conviction that transformation is beneficial.

The value of personal advice: Wealth management through the pandemic

Build a strong foundation, leading with technology.

Data and technology together form the backbone that supports analytics-led transformation. A strong analytics backbone requires a rigorous standard of data management, coupled with informed decisions about the IT applications and systems to employ.

A digital approach to client-centric servicing

A leading bank created a digital and analytics-powered application that ingests internal and external data points, enabling it to identify “hidden affluence” among its clients.

Another bank combined demographic data with information from client conversations to generate real-time product recommendations and facilitate cross-selling. To continuously train the recommendation engine, the bank built a central data lake—consolidated, centralized storage for raw, unstructured, semistructured, and structured data from multiple sources—so the system has an ever-growing set of data to work from. It then pushed product recommendations through multiple client channels.

A leading investment bank continuously scrapes more than 2,000 financial news sources and more than 800 blogs, stock message sites, and social-media platforms. This exercise helped to enrich the data used by the analytics engine to assess sentiment and inform insights on stocks, bonds, commodities, countries, currencies, and cryptocurrencies.

Wealth managers are routinely in touch with their clients offline. These interactions elicit significant information about client preferences and requirements, but the information is often stored on paper or in RMs’ heads. To mine this knowledge fully, wealth managers must capture it digitally and convert it into a structured format that can be processed to create insights and personalized services (see sidebar “A digital approach to client-centric servicing”). In doing so, they need to put systems in place to ingest, store, and organize the data in line with regulatory obligations while ensuring the data are accurate, available, and accessible.

On the technology side, some leading wealth managers use natural-language processing to analyze text and voice data and identify personalized triggers and insights. Others are building feedback loops across channels to train artificial intelligence algorithms. Technologies can also be applied to processes: robotic process automation, for example, can replace routine manual labor and mental processing in regulatory compliance, risk assessment, reporting, and query management.

Deployment of data-driven decision-making requires scalable, adaptable, and resilient core technology components—a unified data and technology stack that connects across IT activities. 3 Sven Blumberg, Rich Isenberg, Dave Kerr, Milan Mitra, and Renny Thomas, “ Beyond digital transformations: Modernizing core technology for the AI bank of the future ,” April 2021, McKinsey.com. This will enable managers to adopt a tech-first approach to designing customer journeys.

In building data and IT architecture, wealth managers require a basic tool kit with four key components:

• a rationalized IT stack to create a common front-and back-end platform and a unified resource for mobile and web applications
• a scalable data platform with modular data pipelines and application-programming-interface (API)-based microservices for building and deploying analytics solutions at scale
• a semi-autonomous lab environment to enable experimentation, coupled with an at-scale factory environment for production of analytics solutions
• a highly scalable distributed network on the cloud to respond to variable demand for data storage and processing

In parallel to assembling these components, banks must consolidate data from across geographies and business lines. This will enable analysts to elicit insights based on the maximum amount of information. Some leading players first experiment in a sandbox environment and work with external partners to acquire the necessary skills, after which they scale up incrementally.

Build the team and prioritize change management

It is not easy to scale and sustain analytics impact. Organizational silos and cultural resistance are common inhibiting factors, while the vital role that RMs play in forming and maintaining relationships must be adapted to the new environment. Indeed, RMs must be front and center of the transformation process. For this, organizations need effective team building and change management.

Team building. A productive approach to team building is to create cross-functional squads with a range of talents (Exhibit 4). Product owners and designers should be responsible for ensuring that the team meets the needs of its clients (RMs or end clients) and stays focused on delivering value. Data scientists and data engineers implement use cases and check that insights are generated as data are ingested—a minimal-viable-product (MVP) approach. IT architects and software engineers, meanwhile, build the slick interfaces and back-end systems that deliver insights to clients across channels.

How three Asian wealth managers engaged clients and boosted RM productivity

A leading private bank deployed machine learning to generate next-best conversation ideas. It built propensity models and analyzed customer clusters to identify anchor clients and learn from transaction patterns.

Another private bank built a digital workbench that enables RMs to serve clients via a single platform. The workbench was integrated with a centrally hosted recommendation engine that provides personalized recommendations based on life events and transaction data.

A third private bank used explanatory and predictive modeling to identify “moments of truth.” These informed RM coverage and outreach strategy, which helped the bank develop initiatives to support growth and focus RMs on high-value activities.

A core objective should be to explore analytics and AI use cases that boost RM productivity (see sidebar “How three Asian wealth managers engaged clients and boosted RM productivity”). To that end, the squad should embed business and channel management teams so that ideas are aligned with RM client services. Several firms have found that involving RMs and other domain experts in squads leads to significant improvements in data interpretation and modeling.

In many cases, assembling productive squads will require new talent. In particular, banks will need data scientists to be responsible for building analytics software and data engineers to scope and build data pipelines and data architecture. Translators, who act as conduits between the business and technology teams, will be critical for ensuring that squads understand business needs. Finally, squads need IT skill sets to ensure that analytics and digital solutions are compatible with core data and technology stacks.

The best approach to talent acquisition is to take baby steps: get one squad right, foster RM adoption, and then gradually expand capabilities as use cases multiply and are scaled up. Some of the required skill sets are in high demand, so outsourcing may be a realistic early option. In the longer term, however, it makes sense to build internally.

Change management. Relationship managers should be encouraged to embrace analytics and convinced that new applications lead to better services and higher levels of performance. Change management strategies can help. Examples include creating teams of “influencers,” running capability-building sessions, developing change narratives that generate widespread excitement, redefining roles, and aligning performance with financial or nonfinancial awards.

Institutionalize new ways of working

Analytics-driven transformation at scale should be predicated on collaboration, team self-steering, and an iterative approach to problem-solving—elements of the so-called agile approach, which originated in software development. In running agile sprints, it pays to keep business needs in sight, accepting that failure is part of the process. Two-week sprints are usually sufficient to get pilots up and running, and the aim should be to produce an MVP with every sprint.

Wealth managers can apply these basic principles via four process disciplines:

• Inspect and adapt. Daily check-ins will ensure that teams identify roadblocks, such as product backlogs, and maintain their focus on goals.
• Engage end users. Sprint reviews with end users, stakeholders, and sponsors enable teams to gather feedback and bake in recommendations.
• Embed a sense of unity and purpose. Teams should hold retrospectives to incorporate learnings.
• Institutionalize support infrastructure. Agile tooling (for example, Confluence, Jira, and Zeplin) will facilitate experimentation and support remote working where necessary.

Organizations using agile operating models must embrace flexible learning. This is a departure from traditional waterfall-based approaches, in which decision-making occurs at the beginning of each project. In agile, capability building and a relentless focus on change management will be vital elements of optimizing the program. To cement the relationship between innovation and growth, leading firms also assign KPIs to application rollouts, and they reward decision makers based on the value created.

Most wealth managers would say they have already embarked on an analytics journey; many have begun deploying digital applications in various aspects of their businesses. Often, however, the whole system is less than the sum of its parts, and people remain attached to established ways of working. To make a leap forward, wealth managers should commit to bold agendas that will support the scaling up of analytics-driven approaches.

Anutosh Banerjee is a partner in McKinsey’s Singapore office, where Vishal Kaushik and Aditya Saxena are associate partners; Fumiaki Katsuki is a partner in the Hanoi office; and Sanchit Suneja is an associate partner in the Mumbai office, where Renny Thomas is a senior partner.

The authors wish to thank Tiffany Kwok and Charu Singhal for their contributions to this article.

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