Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors 2023/24: No. 17

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No. 17 - Michael J Schill

Michael J Schill
Sponsors Professor of Business Administration
University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Michael J Schill is the Sponsors Professor of Business Administration at Darden School of Business. He teaches core finance courses in the MBA programme at Darden and the Financial Trading elective. He previously taught at the University of California-Riverside, the University of Cambridge and the University of Melbourne.

His research spans empirical questions in corporate finance, investments and international finance, and he has been published in such major finance journals as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. He is the author of over 30 case studies and technical notes and co-authored the case textbook Case Studies in Finance: Managing for Corporate Value Creation, published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

His co-authored case, Ferrari: The 2015 Initial Public Offering, won the 2021 Finance, Accounting and Control category award at The Case Centre Awards.

Michael's top bestselling cases

Browse Michael's top three bestselling cases during the last year.

Darden Capital Management: The Cavalier Fund

Reference no. UVA-F-1853

This case examines the investment strategy decisions of a student portfolio management team in April 2017. The case is designed to provide a context for an introduction to the intuition of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and practical estimation methods. Students are invited to make investment recommendations based on the risk-return characteristics of a set of stock-investment alternatives. The case discussion surrounds the tension with respect to the relevant measure of risk and the method for estimating benchmark returns. The case equips students with the materials for estimating a CAPM-based benchmark for each security using market data.

Ferrari: The 2015 Initial Public Offering

Reference no. UVA-F-1775

This case examines the October 2015 initial public offering pricing decision for legendary Italian sports car company Ferrari by Fiat Chrysler management. Students are invited to model the value of Ferrari in light of Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne's interest in expanding production despite the company's long-standing tradition of severely limiting production strategy to maintain an exclusive brand image. The case is designed to showcase corporate valuation using discounted cash flow and peer-company market multiples for a company that exists in two sectors: automotive and luxury goods.

Chestnut Foods (A)

Reference no. UVA-F-1736

After a period of poor stock-market performance, conglomerate Chestnut Foods faces the acquisition of its stock by an activist investor. The new investor demands the sale of Chestnut's high-growth division, which contrasts with the CFO's turnaround plan to expand this same division. To disentangle the way forward for Chestnut, students are invited to grapple with the risk-adjusted performance of each division and the estimation of division-specific hurdle rates.

View all Michael's cases

Bestselling case author in...

34 - 2020/21

“Many business school classroom experiences are oriented toward simply building student understanding of common theory and tools. But the best classroom experiences, I find, go beyond just building understanding and facilitate building student decision-making judgement with regard to the common theory and tools.

“Case-based teaching provides a powerful learning environment for building judgement as students are invited to make real-world decisions in challenging and ambiguous situations by exercising judgement in how to apply common theory and tools. This opportunity to practice exercising judgement makes case-based teaching not only a powerful way to train business leaders but an engaging way to really understand the common theory and tools.

“Powerful case material that builds student judgement is centred on decision-making tension, ample and appropriate opportunity for the application of theory and tools, and real-world ambiguity in the data required.”

~ Michael J Schill