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Raven’s Sun Enterprise Ltd. is a small oilfield and construction site delivery business operated by firefighter Mike LaPlante on his days off. Mike is the firm’s only driver, so scheduling his time profitably is the critical success factor. Students will have to consider an unusual measure of volume, Mike’s available work days, to assess potential profitability and risk during a recession. They will have to apply constrained resource analysis and cost-volume-profit analysis (CVP) to three different sales mixes, which in this service business involve combinations of in-city and long-haul deliveries. Finally, their recommendations will relate the CVP analysis to work/family balance and safety issues.

The case study documents an incident involving one of the world’s largest family-owned, publicly traded firms. The case is set in Hong Kong, where Chinese, Western, and local cultures intermingle, affecting the way corruption is viewed and dealt with. It involves issues related to conflicts within a prominent family leading to a high-profile scandal, describing tensions between the desire to maintain family control over the firm and the need to maintain proper governance and transparency for financial markets, respond to social pressure from a society that deals aggressively with corruption, and deal with a criminal inquiry that could lead to years in prison. This was all happening while complex political issues simmered in the background.

In late February 2003, Don Stewart, CEO of Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF), was considering changes to the firm's strategy. Acquisitions had characterized the industry for the past few years, and SLF had been successful with its own purchase of Keyport and Independent Financial Marketing Group in the United States in 2000 and Clarica in 2002. The latter had made SLF the largest insurance company in Canada and the sixth largest in terms of market capitalization in North America. Stewart wondered about the best course of action to sustain SLF's growth and steer the company towards a market leadership position in the global insurance market.