Publications

Article

Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure

By: Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood

Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear all agency costs that they create and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We argue that if equity is... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Ownership; Conflict of Interests; Investment; Valuation

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May 2015
Case

Venture Republic, 2011

By: W. Carl Kester and Mayuka Yamazaki

In December 2011, the founders of Venture Republic, a Japanese developer and operator of on-line search engines for shopping and travel, faced a decison about whether or not to take the company private in a management buyout transaction just three years after an... View Details

Keywords: Management Buyout; MBO; Valuation Methodologies; Financing Decisions; Conflicts Of Interest; Governance; Japan; Search Engines; Going Private; Conflict of Interests; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Privatization; Financing and Loans; Corporate Governance; Web Services Industry; Japan

January 2015
Article

Are Incentives Without Expertise Sufficient? Evidence from Fortune 500 Firms

By: Emilie R. Feldman and Cynthia A. Montgomery

Agency theory predicts that incentives will align agents' interests with those of principals. However, the resource-based view suggests that to be effective, the incentive to deliver must be paired with the ability to deliver. Using Fortune 500 boards as an... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Incentives; Expertise; Motivation and Incentives; Governing and Advisory Boards; Experience and Expertise; Agency Theory

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17 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

January 2005 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Kohler Co. (A)

Kohler Co., best known for its plumbing fixtures, is a large, private family firm. As part of a recapitalization aimed at preserving family ownership of Kohler Co., nonfamily shareholders, who held 4% of common stock, were required to sell their shares to the company.... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Stocks; Price; Family Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation

Article

ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities

By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim

The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods. Myth Number 1:... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Investment Management; Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance

February 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Supplement

ExxonMobil: Business as Usual? (B)

By: George Serafeim, Shiva Rajgopal and David Freiberg

The case presents ExxonMobil's response to growing pressure to disclose how climate change will impact their business. This includes multiple asset impairments and losing a proxy vote to shareholders to increase climate change related reporting. Supplements the (B)... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Oil Prices; Oil Companies; Asset Impairment; Predictive Analytics; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Innovation; Disclosure; Accounting; Valuation; Energy Sources; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Governance Compliance; Climate Change; Financial Reporting; Energy Industry; United States

January 2006 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Deutsche Borse and the European Markets

By: Dwight B. Crane and Monika Stachowiak

In December 2004, Deutsche Borse proposed an offer for the London Stock Exchange. Some shareholders opposed the acquisition, leading to the offer's withdrawal and replacement of management, including the CEO and board members. Written from the viewpoint of Deutsche... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Strategy; Governing and Advisory Boards; Capital Structure; Stocks; Valuation; Corporate Governance; Price; Change Management; Commercialization; Financial Services Industry; Europe

16 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Governing Misvalued Firms

Keywords: by Dalida Kadyrzhanova & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

February 2005 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Arauco (A): Forward Integration or Horizontal Expansion?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Jorge Tarzijan and Jordan Mitchell

Celulosa Arauco is a major Chilean producer of market pulp and wood products. Owning over 1.2 million hectares of forest in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the company's key advantage is the ideal growing conditions in which the company's forests are located. As of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Expansion; Vertical Integration; Forest Products Industry; Chile

October 2008
Article

It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

By: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have, argue Khurana and Nohria of Harvard Business School. True... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Education; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Management; Trust; Value Creation

January 2014 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Mittal Steel's Pursuit of Arcelor (A)

By: Paul M. Healy and Penelope Rossano

Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of Mittal Steel, a UK-based company with Indian roots, took advantage of a weakened Arcelor that had successfully won a bidding war for Canadian steel company Dofasco, with an unsolicited bid to buy the company. Mittal's plans for acquiring Arcelor... View Details

Keywords: Fiduciary Duty; Steel; India; Europe; Governance; Mergers; Board Decisions; White Knight; Strategy; Negotiation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Steel Industry; Canada; United Kingdom; Russia; India

June 2007 (Revised July 2007)
Case

USG Corporation (A)

Deals with CEO Bill Foote's decision of how to deal with USG's exposure to asbestos liability. USG was the largest building materials company in the United States, with 14,000 employees and gross revenues of $3.8 billion. Although USG used asbestos in a small subset of... View Details

Keywords: Legal Liability; Construction Industry

April 1998 (Revised May 2001)
Supplement

Acquisition of Consolidated Rail Corporation (B), The

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Lori A. Flees and Mathew M Millett

Eight days after CSX announced it was going to buy Consolidated Rail (Conrail) for $88.65 per share, Norfolk Southern made a hostile $100 per share bid for Conrail. Over the next several months, the potential acquirers upped their bids while exchanging criticism in the... View Details

Keywords: Law; Valuation; Rail Transportation; Bids and Bidding; Governance Controls; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance; Rail Industry; United States

20 Aug 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Hedge Fund Investor Activism and Takeovers

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood & Michael Schor; Banking

October 2014
Article

Good Cop, Bad Cop: Complementarities Between Debt and Equity in Disciplining Management

By: Alexander Guembel and Lucy White

In this paper we examine how the quantity of information generated about firm prospects can be improved by splitting a firm's cash flow into a "safe" claim (debt) and a "risky" claim (equity). The former, being relatively insensitive to upside risk, provides a... View Details

Keywords: Information; Borrowing and Debt; Equity; Corporate Finance