On 30 August 2016, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, ordered Ireland to recover €13 billion in illegal state aid (plus interest) that Ireland was alleged to have granted Apple over a decade from 2003.

The case focuses on the financing of blockchain and its pros and cons. The use of security tokens, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and related issues in terms of financing costs, liquidity and governance are analysed.

The case focuses on blockchain (and distributed ledger technology or DLT) – a ‘hot’ area of fintech – and on R3 as a fintech consortium that includes some of the world’s largest banks, financial institutions and regulators. R3 started out as a family office in 2014 and evolved into a fintech company focused on the application of distributed ledger technology (DLT).

The case explores the murky world of tax havens and hidden wealth. The so-called ‘Panama Papers’, ‘Paradise Papers’, ‘Swiss Leaks’ and ‘LuxLeaks’ are essentially digital dumps that exposed where the the ultra-rich had for decades stashed their billions to evade paying taxes. Academics such as Gabriel Zucman have mined these revelations for insights about global wealth inequality.

Case A: Describes the development of e-inclusion, HP's program aimed at addressing the Digital Divide. It follows the project from its initial focus of corporate responsibility to its goal of developing new, profitable markets among the underserved.

Case B describes the initial developments in the Kuppam i-community, in India, a pilot project, under the auspices of e-inclusion, aimed at researching the potential to find a market for IT products and services and for HP’s competences among the poor.