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Multi Media Mapping Ltd Case (B)

By John Bates, Cosette Reczek, Sean Phelan

2009

It was early October 2007 as Sean Phelan, founder of Multi Media Mapping Ltd, reviewed the previous 12 months. It had been a year of highs and lows that now set the scene for the most important decision in the company’s 12-year history. At least he now had some options to consider – unlike this time last year, when the company had been facing technological oblivion and market-share meltdown. The Multimap technology team under Sean’s direction had rebuilt the whole Multimap.com site from the ground up, while delivering over two billion map impressions worldwide and maintaining service to their eight million unique users in the UK and probably half as many again worldwide. Eric Brown, Multimap’s new CTO, who had been brought on board to manage the project after masterminding the launch of the UK National Lottery online, described it as “… changing all four engines and the wings on a plane while it was crossing the Atlantic – at night!” At the same time, Sean’s advisors had been in discussion with a number of financial and corporate partners. Three firm proposals had been made for either partial or full acquisition of the business. Now Sean had to decide which, if any, of these offers to pursue and effectively exit the business he had founded 12 years before, or whether to be a leading player in the consolidation of the on-line mapping industry.

Learning objectives

  1. Understand accounting valuations and how to apply valuation methodology
  2. Evaluate business acquisition proposals versus raising more funding to consolidate and finance company growth
  3. Illustrate the impact of sustaining and disruptive technological change

Details

Publication Date: April 2009
LBS Case Code: CS-20-003
Topic:
Subjects: , , , ,
Industry:
Geography:
Pages: 6
Format: pdf