An Angel Investor with an Agenda
Dilemma Faced
In this case study, Gloria Londono, a health care entrepreneur and owner of several eldercare centres, Calidad de Vida as it is called, has a cloud of dilemmas hovering on her mind. Victor Serna, an angel investor, has offered her three million euros as an investment in her company. However, Victor does not prefer franchising and had informed Gloria that he would rather she open up new centres with direct ownership and control. On top of that, he is demanding for a twenty-five per cent stake, a board seat with voting rights on all strategic decisions and the option of liquidating his position in the short term future of five years either through a public offering or a sale. Given this option of more funding, as such, the dilemmas that Gloria is facing are how she would grow her company and whether or not she should grow her company. Part of the dilemma is that she is thinking of how she should grow the business, whether she should continue with the present model, which is franchising, and grow in a slower pace or should she just accept the money offered and open up a chain of eldercare centres with better control and direct ownership? It is not that Gloria is in financial difficulties but contrary to that, her franchising business is doing well albeit at a slower pace than she would have preferred. However, the only issue she faces is maintaining quality and uniformity in all the centres. With the windfall of 3 million euros, she would be able to turn the company around for better growth opportunities, but, at the expense of the level of involvement of her friends and families who has invested with her so far. What is the best thing for her to do? In order to address these dilemmas and for Gloria to become a seeing, talking practitioner, we need to identify the key stakeholders. A good seeing, talking practitioner is someone who is able to immediately identify moral issues, able to understand and differentiate the moral dimensions in various
In this case study, Gloria Londono, a health care entrepreneur and owner of several eldercare centres, Calidad de Vida as it is called, has a cloud of dilemmas hovering on her mind. Victor Serna, an angel investor, has offered her three million euros as an investment in her company. However, Victor does not prefer franchising and had informed Gloria that he would rather she open up new centres with direct ownership and control. On top of that, he is demanding for a twenty-five per cent stake, a board seat with voting rights on all strategic decisions and the option of liquidating his position in the short term future of five years either through a public offering or a sale. Given this option of more funding, as such, the dilemmas that Gloria is facing are how she would grow her company and whether or not she should grow her company. Part of the dilemma is that she is thinking of how she should grow the business, whether she should continue with the present model, which is franchising, and grow in a slower pace or should she just accept the money offered and open up a chain of eldercare centres with better control and direct ownership? It is not that Gloria is in financial difficulties but contrary to that, her franchising business is doing well albeit at a slower pace than she would have preferred. However, the only issue she faces is maintaining quality and uniformity in all the centres. With the windfall of 3 million euros, she would be able to turn the company around for better growth opportunities, but, at the expense of the level of involvement of her friends and families who has invested with her so far. What is the best thing for her to do? In order to address these dilemmas and for Gloria to become a seeing, talking practitioner, we need to identify the key stakeholders. A good seeing, talking practitioner is someone who is able to immediately identify moral issues, able to understand and differentiate the moral dimensions in various
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