Question

You are the Vice President. Strategic Alliances at Juniper Investments. You have been tasked to form a joint venture between Juniper Investments and the following four investors, for the purpose of busing a stake in Xinzhang, a Chinese manufacturing business. Juniper will be a 45% shareholder of the joint venture. Investors A to D will be holding 15% (A), 20% (B). 15% (C) and 5% (D) stakes m the joint venture, respectively. The representatives from Investors A and C are very close, basing been m business together for more than 15 years. In meetings, they are outspoken and tend to speak up for each other.

The representative from Investor B is a well-respected businessman but has no manufacturing experience. The representative from Investor D turns up for all the meetings but is a very quiet individual. He is making his first overseas investment through this joint venture and appears cautious about the investment amount required. The seller is Henry, an impatient Chinese national, who is prepared to walk away from the deal if he senses any dissent within the investor group. Having been through a 2-day workshop on Managing Multi-Partite Negotiations, you know that managing this diverse group of investors would be challenging. Your Managing Director, a 20-vear veteran in the investment circle, does not understand why you are so stressed. He has been discussing with Henri* for 15 months and analyzing extensive data about Xinzhang. Henry has always responded very favorably to him. Thus, your Managing Director does not want to lose this deal. He wants you to arrange a meeting between all these investors and him. The agenda of this meeting is to discuss an agreed position to negotiate with Henry, including:

·    the purchase price (i.e.. the total investment amount from the group of investors),
·    the person, within the investor group, who should be selected to represent the investor
·    group as the group spokesperson during the MOU signing and other publicity events,
·    the two representatives from the investor group who will sit on the Board of Directors
·    of the Chinese manufacturing company, and
·    which investors shall have the right to veto further expansion of Xinzhang' s business.
·    if it requires more funds to be injected.

Question 1

(a) Examine why managing multiple parties would be complex and advise your Managing Director. Illustrate and support your advice with specific examples based on the above case scenario.

(b) Formulate a plan on how you would manage the multi-partite negotiations between the investors and Henry. In your plan, you must evaluate at least the three (3) most important elements of each stage: (i) the pre-negotiation stage and (ii) the formal negotiation stage.

Question 2

(a) During the 2-day workshop on Managing Multi-Partite Negotiations, the facilitator emphasized that you must establish the appropriate environment and context for a successful integrative approach to negotiations. Only after setting the right context, you would then implement the steps in the integrative negotiation process. Analyze and discuss the four (4) key contextual factors that are critical to the meeting between your Managing Director and the four investors. In your analysis:

·    identify and elaborate on the key contextual factors, and
·    recommend the actions that your Managing Director can take to establish the right context.

Support your analysis with specific examples, based on the case scenario above.

(b) Identify and analyze two (2) major sources of power which your Managing Director possesses vis-a-vis the investors. Explain how he should leverage on these two (2) sources of power to obtain support from the investors.

Question 3

Representatives from Investors A. B. C and D are from the following countries respectively:

Investor A: United States
Investor B: People's Republic of China
Investor C: Germany
Investor D: Indonesia

Please conduct research into Hofetede's four cultural dimensions for the above specific countries. Assess the characteristics typically exhibited by the above countries under the Hofstede's dimensions. Evaluate how these characteristics would likely influence the representatives’ behavior during the negotiation process.

Identify' two (2) significant risks of being too culturally* responsive to such characteristics and explain how you would mitigate such risks.

Summary

The question belongs to Finance and it discusses about managing multiple investments by an investments manager and managing multi-partite negotiations.

Total Word Count 3386

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