Publications

July 1996 (Revised January 1997)
Case

Northwest Airlines: Brush with Bankruptcy (A)--November 1992

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Davis Dyer

Deals with Northwest's financial crisis between the fall of 1992 and the following spring. Northwest's leaders face the problem of how to meet an impending $600 million payment on the 1989 LBO loan when the airline had run out of cash. Concludes by outlining options... View Details

Keywords: Air Transportation; Restructuring; Leveraged Buyouts; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Strategy; Financial Crisis; Air Transportation Industry; United States

August 2017 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Enpara.com: Digital Bank at a Crossroad

By: Sunil Gupta and Eren Kuzucu

In March 2017, Elsa Pekmez Atan (MBA 2004), was wondering about the future of Enpara.com, a digital-only banking platform of QNB Finansbank. Since its launch in October 2012, Enpara had been successful in attracting over 600,000 customers by appealing to digital savvy,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Competition; Banks and Banking; Business Model; Product Launch; Competitive Strategy; Integration; Innovation and Invention; Decision Making; Strategy; Emerging Markets; Digital Transformation; Banking Industry; Turkey

February 2003 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Analyzing Edison Schools Inc. (A)

By: David F. Hawkins and Jacob Cohen

Provides the background information for Edison Schools, Inc. and the 2001 financial statements and footnotes. View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Statements; Education Industry; United States

2014
Book

Entrepreneurial Finance: Finance and Business Strategies for the Serious Entrepreneur

By: Steven Rogers and Roza Makonnen

Whatever business you run or plan to launch, Entrepreneurial Finance provides the essential tools and know-how you need to build a sturdy foundation that will support it for many years to come.
Entrepreneurial Finance, Third Edition, offers potent... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Financial Strategy; Business Strategy

14 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Making the MBA Degree More Accessible

commitments aimed at reducing financial barriers that often prevent students from underrepresented minority groups from applying to and attending HBS: Launch a need-based waiver of the application fee for... View Details

December 2002 (Revised February 2005)
Case

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (A): A Global Merger

By: Ashish Nanda

French IT consulting giant Cap Gemini is poised to purchase the consulting arm of Ernst & Young, a U.S.-based Big 5 accounting firm. In doing so, many differences need to be resolved, including negotiating with Ernst & Young entities all over the world as well as... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Multinational Firms and Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Information Technology Industry; Consulting Industry; France

September–October 2020
Article

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

SSRN

August 2022 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Sweet Teez Bakery: Projecting the Dough’s Rise

By: Emily R. McComb, Mel Martin and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2021, the HBS Impact Investment Fund student team met with entrepreneur Teresa Maynard, who had applied for a $25,000 impact investment loan. The students thought the former Harvard Data Scientist’s bakery business, Sweet Teez Bakery, showed promise. Maynard had... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Goods and Commodities; Financial Reporting; Small Business; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Massachusetts

2012
Article

Journalists and the Stock Market

By: Christopher Parsons, C. Dougal, J. Engelberg and D. Garcia

We use exogenous scheduling of Wall Street Journal columnists to identify a causal relation between financial reporting and stock market performance. To measure the media's unconditional effect, we add columnist fixed effects to a daily regression of excess Dow Jones... View Details

Keywords: Media; Financial Reporting; Financial Markets

Web

Application Process - MBA

genuine financial hardship from paying the $250 fee may submit a request for a need-based application fee waiver . You can access the waiver request form after you start your application. * 2+2 Deferred Admissions applicants have a... View Details

24 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Building an IT Governance Committee

speaking, the IT expert serves much the same function as the certified financial expert on an audit committee. A CIO or CTO with solid experience in the management of IT qualifies; for example, the IT... View Details

Keywords: by Richard Nolan & Warren McFarlan

September 2011
Case

AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment

By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman

The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Ethics; Investment; Financial Crisis

March 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Supplement

Growing Integrated Services at Jones Lang LaSalle (2008) (C)

By: Ranjay Gulati and Luciana Silvestri

This case describes the strategic and organizational challenges that Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) faced between 2005 and 2008. Having dismantled its long-standing service-line-oriented structure, JLL created two interdependent groups: Accounts and Markets. Accounts housed... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Strategy; Integration; Real Estate Industry; North America; South America; Central America

March 2004 (Revised July 2004)
Case

Sarbanes-Oxley Act, The

By: Lynn S. Paine and James Weber

Describes the evolution and passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 from the perspective of the senior counsel on capital markets for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Corporate Accountability; Governance Controls; Capital Markets; Financial Reporting; Laws and Statutes; United States

April 2012
Case

Man Group (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Thomas M. Clay

The Man Group was a huge and successful UK-based hedge fund and fund of funds manager. Through acquisitions, the company had consciously diversified its portfolio of investment products. In 2007 Man had to decide whether or not to spin off its brokerage business. Man... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Crisis; Decisions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Diversification; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United Kingdom; Europe

May 2013
Article

Here's a Tip: Prosocial Gratuities Are Linked to Corruption

By: Magnus Thor Torfason, Francis J. Flynn and Daniella Kupor

We investigated the link between tipping, an altruistic act, and bribery, an immoral act. We found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita GDP, income... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Crime and Corruption; Behavior