Tere Bruno John Mullins
LBS Ref: CS-19-10 Date: June, 2019
Ricardo Álvarez-Díaz and Cristina Villalón (A) Abstract It was September 17th, 2008. After having spent the previous eight years building a thriving architectural practice in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ricardo Álvarez-Díaz was worried. Two days earlier, the venerable investment bank Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest in the USA, had filed for bankruptcy protection. This morning, his two largest and most important clients had called (within one hour of one another!), cancelling projects that were already well underway. Newspaper headlines everywhere were screaming disaster. The global financial markets were in turmoil. Álvarez-Díaz had just checked his accounts receivable and had learned that his firm was owed some $2.1 million by these and his other clients. A significant portion of that sum was, in turn, owed to the various professional service firms that worked on his projects. “I don’t want to be an architect anymore,” he said to himself. “I’m responsible for all these people. This profession does not afford me the financial freedom I crave.”
Tere Bruno is a Research Associate and John Mullins is Associate Professor of Management Practice at London Business School. London Business School cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion and are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Some names and places and all financial data have been disguised. © 2019 London Business School. All rights reserved. No part of this case study may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of London Business School.