Turnaround at Mattel, 2017

Just nine months into her new role as chief executive of Mattel, the world's leading toy maker, Margo Georgiadis faces a set of unexpected, inter-related decisions in the fall of 2017. Mattel's performance had been lagging for a number of years, and Georgiadis had been hired from Google to develop and execute a turnaround plan; she would become the company's third chief executive in three years. However, recent media reports indicate that her largest competitor Hasbro is pursuing a take-over of Mattel, seemingly to take advantage of the significant and continuing slide in Mattel's stock price. Georgiadias must assess whether a transaction with Hasbro would be attractive to her various stakeholders. If not, she must determine how to fund Mattel's turn-around plan and ongoing operations on a stand-alone basis, in the face of looming debt maturities and potential debt-covenant breaches at Mattel that must be addressed in the near term.