Publications

June 2014 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Focus Financial Partners and the U.S. RIA Industry in 2014

By: Luis Viceira and Emily A. Chien

In the Spring of 2014, Rudy Adolf, CEO and founder of Focus Financial, and the two other co-founders of the firm are considering alternative growth strategies to solidify Focus Financial's position as a leading aggregator of independent wealth management firms in the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

2014
Working Paper

Corporate Financial Policies in Misvalued Credit Markets

By: Jarrad Harford, Marc Martos-Vila and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We theoretically and empirically investigate the repercussions of credit market misvaluation for a firm's borrowing and investment decisions. Using an ex-post measure of the accuracy of credit ratings to capture debt market misvaluation, we find evidence that firms... View Details

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November 2018
Teaching Note

The Tax Man: Taxes in Private Equity Real Estate

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-077. This teaching note provides the back up analysis for the various alternatives to be considered in choosing the optimal investment structure for the real estate acquisition. It contrasts the interests of the tax exempt investors... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Alternative Investment Structures; Taxation; Private Equity; Property; Acquisition; Conflict of Interests; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

February 2024
Case

Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary

By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud

Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry; Hungary; United States

March 2010 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Chile's Copper Surplus: The Road Not Taken (A)

By: Laura Alfaro, Dante Roscini and Renee Kim

In 2008, Andres Velasco, Chile's Finance Minister, was under mounting criticisms over his fiscal policy. As the world's largest copper producer, Chile was benefiting from the rise in copper prices, which had more than tripled since 2003. Copper revenues translated into... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Metals and Minerals; Investment Funds; Policy; State Ownership; Wealth; Chile

16 Feb 2023
HBS Case

ESG Activists Met the Moment at ExxonMobil, But Did They Succeed?

The impact-investment hedge fund Engine No. 1 made a big splash in May 2021 when it managed to get three nominees elected to the ExxonMobil board of directors. It was an open effort to prod the oil giant toward renewable energy and test whether activist investing could... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Financial Services

August 2014
Article

What Makes Annuitization More Appealing?

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Stephen P. Zeldes

We conduct and analyze two large surveys of hypothetical annuitization choices. We find that allowing individuals to annuitize a fraction of their wealth increases annuitization relative to a situation where annuitization is an "all or nothing" decision. Very few... View Details

Keywords: Annuity; Pension; Retirement Income; Framing; Annuities; Retirement

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14 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 14, 2007

including sovereign capital structure arbitrage. Second, it provides a new framework for analysis and management of sovereign wealth funds being... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2016 (Revised August 2016)
Case

CreditEase: Taking Inclusive Finance Online

By: Michael Chu, John S. Ji and Nancy Hua Dai

The world’s largest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender annually disbursing over a million loans totaling $10 billion, China’s CreditEase, must decide whether to IPO in the NYSE its online lending platform, Yirendai, before the year-end window closes in 2015. Yirendai sought to... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Internet and the Web; Financing and Loans; Credit; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; China

July 2024
Case

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: Bringing Systematic Investment to Philanthropy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Alexander Bischoff and Sophia Pan

Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), evaluated her client’s philanthropy project and its mediocre performance. RPA was a segment of the Rockefeller Family Office’s Philanthropy Department, becoming an independent charity in 2002. Consistently... View Details

July 1991 (Revised October 1995)
Case

KPMG Peat Marwick: The Shadow Partner

By: Robert G. Eccles Jr.

KPMG Peat Marwick executives needed to decide whether to fund full development of "The Shadow Partner," the name coined to describe a worldwide information network that would link all KPMG professionals to each other and to a wealth of data bases and information... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology

05 Dec 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, December 5, 2017

Social Psychology Bulletin The Amount and Source of Millionaires' Wealth (Moderately) Predicts Their Happiness By: Donnelly, Grant Edward, Tianyi Zheng, Emily Haisley, and Michael I. Norton Abstract—Two samples of more than 4,000... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 30

role of angel funding for the growth, survival, and access to follow-on funding of high-growth start-up firms. We use a regression discontinuity approach to control for unobserved heterogeneity between firms... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Where Main Street Meets Wall Street

years, the mutual fund would shake up established norms of wealth creation and distribution in the United States. Indeed, it would help reshape America by uniting Wall Street and Main Street, two disparate... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Financial Services

May 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

The Robin Hood Foundation

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and Cathy Ross

Created by hedge fund and financial managers, the Robin Hood Foundation fights poverty through grants to nonprofit organizations. As the global financial crisis continues to impact the poor disproportionately, the Foundation needs to ensure that its funds are being... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Poverty; Organizational Design; Performance Effectiveness; Financial Crisis; Programs; Measurement and Metrics

March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Tribal Councils Investment Group of Manitoba Ltd.

By: David L. Ager

In the Fall of 2014, Heather Berthelette, the recently appointed COO of Tribal Councils Investment Group of Manitoba Ltd. (TCIG), was preparing a recommendation to the Board of Directors about whether to dissolve the company and return any remaining funds to the seven... View Details

Keywords: Indigenous Communities; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Social Enterprise; Economic Growth; Investment Banking; Canada

15 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

These VC Partners May Make Your Firm Less Innovative

hit-driven business,” says McDonald. VC firms spread their wealth around to dozens of startups, hoping to hit that one jackpot that might be the next Facebook or Google. The problem comes when they have to choose between supporting one... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Banking

26 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 26, 2008

or Politics? Harvard Business School Case 708-053 On March 21, 2008, the U.S. government secured an agreement from two leading sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) to adopt a new set... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2011 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Jamaica's Anemic Growth: The IMF, China and the Debt(th) Trap

By: Rafael Di Tella and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the economic development problems faced by the small Caribbean-island country of Jamaica over most of the past half-century. The Jamaican economy showed relatively strong growth in the 1960s but stagnated in the 1970s. By the end of that decade,... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Crime and Corruption; Poverty; Private Sector; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Economy; Developing Countries and Economies; Borrowing and Debt; Jamaica