Publications

01 Jan 2014
News

Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy

September 2016 (Revised August 2018)
Case

Pi Investments

By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Tony L. He

Pi was a large family office pioneering the concept of 100% portfolio impact investing. Tasked with preserving capital, generating moderate returns and advancing the family’s social justice goals – Pi’s Managing Directors had to identify appropriate products across... View Details

Keywords: Investment Fund; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Investment Funds

March 2014 (Revised January 2015)
Case

Ghurka

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Walter J. Salmon and Christine Snively

Ghurka was a 38-year-old luxury leather goods brand that specialized in leather and twill luggage, handbags, and accessories. Brightwork Brand Holdings Corp. acquired it as an asset purchase in 2011. Ghurka, under CEO John Reuter, worked to re-launch the brand with a... View Details

Keywords: Retailing; Luxury

May 2021
Teaching Note

BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Aiyesha Dey and George Serafeim

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 120-042 View Details

Keywords: BlackRock; Investment Management; Stewardship Codes; Stewardship Role Of Institutions; ESG; Purpose; Corporate Purpose; Investment; Asset Management; Corporate Governance; Mission and Purpose; Financial Services Industry; United States

21 Jun 2017
Blog Post

Agricultural Investing: Where Boots Meet Suits

HBS Career & Professional Development (CPD) asked students to describe their career interests and what they are up to this summer. I hope to invest in assets that will be impacted by climate change, and subsequently, mitigate climate... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing

2008
Working Paper

The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns

By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy

This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Portfolio; Governing and Advisory Boards; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Social and Collaborative Networks; Financial Services Industry

Read Now

October 2009 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Merger of Equals: The Integration of Mellon Financial and The Bank of New York (A)

By: Ryan D. Taliaferro, Clayton S. Rose and David Lane

Less than a month after the close of the merger between The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, managers at the two firms realized that plans for combining their asset servicing businesses—and realizing the $180 million of annual cost savings that they had promised... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Asset Management; Financial Institutions; Risk Management; Integration; Information Technology; Financial Services Industry

12 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 12, 2007

these conventions, pension assets and liabilities are not included in balance sheet calculations. The modern risk management tools of derivatives technologies can improve both corporate decision making and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2024
Article

Establishing the Foundation for Carbon Trading Markets

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston

Poor measurement practices and inadequate controls have led to extensive trading of carbon offset instruments that do not materially reduce the supply of atmospheric GHG. We introduce five carbon offset accounting principles, built from fundamental financial-accounting... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Offsetting; Accounting; Carbon Accounting; E-liabilities; Measurement; Trading; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Sustainability

Read Now

Bob White is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where he teaches courses in the MBA program (Required and Elective curricula) and the Executive Education program. Courses taught include Entrepreneurial... View Details

January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Case

TPG Rise Climate: Deploying 'Climate Capital'

By: Vikram S. Gandhi, David Allen, Sarah Mehta and Shannon Roche

This case is about TPG Rise Climate, a $7.3 billion climate impact fund launched in 2021 by alternative asset manager TPG. Climate investing is a complex, capital-intensive endeavor; entering it has forced TPG to think and act differently. Relative to other funds, Rise... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Environmental Management; Ownership; Science; Value; Asset Management; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; California; San Francisco; New York (city, NY)

30 May 2019
News

How to Ensure ESG Investing Isn’t Whitewash

2008
Chapter

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article. The article was based on a multi-company research project that studied performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement; Strategy

December 1997
Case

American Cyanamid (A) & (B) (Combined)

American Home Products' (AHP) $9 billion hostile takeover of American Cyanamid (Cyanamid) was the largest merger-and-acquistion transaction in 1994, and made AHP the fourth largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. At the time of AHP's offer, Cyanamid had... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Conflict and Resolution; Pharmaceutical Industry

01 Jul 2011
News

Whether to Shutter a Struggling Family Business

November 2016
Article

Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality

By: Mozaffar Khan, George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

Using newly available materiality classifications of sustainability topics, we develop a novel dataset by hand-mapping sustainability investments classified as material for each industry into firm-specific sustainability ratings. This allows us to present new evidence... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Investments; Corporate Social Responsibility; Accounting; Corporate Reporting; Regulation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Investment; Corporate Governance

December 2018 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Brand Activism: Nike and Colin Kaepernick

By: Jill Avery and Koen Pauwels

Nike's selection of politically polarizing Colin Kaepernick as the spokesperson for the 30th anniversary of its iconic "Just Do It" campaign catapulted the brand into the media spotlight and made it a political flashpoint for consumers across America. Would the choice... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Entertainment; Politics; Activism; Brand Equity; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Sports; Advertising; Social Media; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; North America

June 2003 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Pension Policy at The Boots Company PLC

By: Luis M. Viceira and Akiko M. Mitsui

In early 2000, the trustees of the pension scheme at Boots considered a proposal to move 100% of the pension assets into a bond portfolio, which would be passively managed. The Boots Co. PLC was a leading retailer of cosmetics and toiletries in the United Kingdom, and... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Employees; Asset Management; Capital Structure; Investment Portfolio; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom