Case Analysis – Marriott Corporation

Marriott Corporation (MC) was considering financial restructuring proposed by their CFO – Stephen
Bollenbach. Marriott was into hotel business, which due to economic slowdown was facing huge
challenges in terms of revenues. It was considering various options of coming out of the current
financial problem. The financial restructuring plan proposed by their CFO – Stephen Bollenbach was
called “Project Chariot”.

Under the new financial restructuring plan as proposed by the CFO , MC was considering splitting
MC’s service businesses from its property holdings along with its debt. A new company was
proposed to be created for service businesses, with existing MC shareholders receiving shares of new
company equivalent to their shares in old company. The plan was to raise fresh capital in the new
company and parallelly sell off properties of old company once the real estate market recovered
from the economic slowdown.

Project Chariot was a perfect solution to MC’s financial problems, but it was upto the Board of
Directors to decide if they want to adopt and implement “Project Chariot” or not.

As we understand later that the “Project Chariot” was adopted by the BOD with 10:5 voting in favour
of the Project. After few years the US economy was revived and MC was able to sell its assets at a
good price, thus recovering itself from the economic slowdown.

Hence we can conclude that adopting “Project Chariot” for its financial restructuring was a good
decision by Marriott Corporation.