William E. Fruhan

Professor WILLIAM E. FRUHAN, JR. is George E. Bates Professor, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He received his BS degree from Yale University, and his MBA and DBA degrees from Harvard University.  He has served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of Faculty Development;  Chairman of the Executive Education Advanced Management Program; Chairman of the Finance Area at the School; and as course head for Finance in the first year of the MBA Program.

Professor Fruhan is the author of Revitalizing Businesses; Financial Strategy; and The Fight for Competitive Advantage. He is co-editor of Case Problems in Finance (6th through 11th editions). His articles include "Corporate Raiders: Head'em Off at Value Gap;" "Management, Labor and the Golden Goose;" "How Fast Should Your Company Grow?;" "Is Your Stock Worth Its Market Price" (with T. R. Piper), all in the Harvard Business Review; and "Levitz Furniture: A Case History in the Creation and Destruction of Shareholder Value," Financial Analysts Journal.  He has written over 140 cases and teaching notes for use in business School classrooms around the world.

At various times Prof. Fruhan has served as a director of 15 different corporations. Six were firms with publicly traded stock and nine were privately owned. Professor Fruhan is one of the early developers of the concept of value based management, and currently conducts his research in developing business level and corporate strategies aimed at enhancing shareholder value.