Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(120,055)
- Faculty Publications (173)
- October 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Century Bank: Closing Time?
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Bill Kwon
Barry Sloane, second-generation Chairman, President, and CEO of his family’s bank, Century Bank, weighed whether to sell to Eastern Bank. As a small regional bank, Century faced a number of challenging trends, such as digitization and market share decline in the coming... View Details
Keywords: Family Office; Business Exit; Banking; Family; Massachusetts; Boston; United States; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Interpersonal Communication; Decision Making; Finance; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty; Emotions; Banking Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; United States
- October 2022
- Case
An Heir with No Spare: The Deitch Family Office
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Joe and Matt Deitch, father and son, knew it was time to start their own family office. Matthew had recently joined his father at the family’s three enterprises, and they both realized that their family’s needs had grown increasingly complex over the years. In search... View Details
Keywords: Family Office; Philanthropy; Charitable Giving; Family; Family Business; Talent and Talent Management; Entrepreneurship; Governance; Values and Beliefs; Job Search; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Family and Family Relationships; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; Florida; Miami
- October 2022
- Case
Weapons of Self Destruction: Zak Pym Williams and the Cultivation of Mental Wellness
By: Lauren Cohen, Ronnie Stangler and Grace Headinger
Zak Pym Williams, mental health advocate, grappled with the question of how to create a proactive mental health family environment for his children. Having witnessed how mental health challenges such as addiction and depression had impacted the past four generations of... View Details
- October 2022
- Case
Star Magnolia Capital: Becoming Experts at Finding Experts
By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, River Ewing and Grace Headinger
Shinya Deguchi, Founder and Managing Partner of Star Magnolia Capital, a Shanghai-based multi-family office (MFO), considered how to convince a new prospective family that the MFO’s endowment model approach would best suit their needs. In recent decades, there has been... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
To SFO or Not To SFO: The Tolman Family Selects a Family Office Strategy
By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Victoria Alvarez-Arango, Grace Headinger, Mili Sanwalka and Anna Yuan
Peter Tolman, a first-generation investment professional, debated which family office strategy to adopt for managing his family’s assets. As the sole steward of his family’s wealth, he sought to conserve and grow his family’s wealth for him, his wife, and his two very... View Details
- September 2022
- Case
ROI vs. ROI: The Grupo Baobá Family Office
By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Jiawei Ye and Grace Headinger
Fernando Scodro, a third-generation member of his family, mulled over the next step in integrating an ESG strategy into his family office’s investment portfolio. While his family office, Grupo Baobá, had made excellent progress in incorporating his family’s values into... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
One Tiger Per Mountain: The He Family Office
By: Lauren Cohen, Fei Wu and Grace Headinger
Roy He, founder and majority shareholder of his family construction material production company, was preparing to pass down the family business through its first generational handover to his children. His decision would establish his familial legacy and set a precedent... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Hidden Alpha
By: Manuel Amman, Alexander Cochardt, Lauren Cohen and Stephan Heller
This paper documents the central role of hidden connections between fund managers and firm officers in financial markets, drawing on an extensive dataset of over 100 thousand manually identified Facebook profiles and their 35 million Facebook friends. Our findings... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Rural; Urban; Emerging Market; Mobile Technology; Finance; Money; Inflation and Deflation; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Demographics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Finance; Currency; Banks and Banking; Commercial Banking; Financial Strategy; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- May 2022
- Case
From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel and Grace Headinger
Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Director of SkyBridge Capital, considered whether he should officially greenlight the launch of SkyBridge’s own NFT platform — Flatter NFT. He had led the investment firm to push first into Bitcoin and then Ethereum to make SkyBridge a... View Details
Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Technology; Cryptocurrency; Web3; Business Startups; Volatility; Decision Making; Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Strategic Planning; Adoption; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Finance; Currency; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; New York (city, NY)
- March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into... View Details
Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details
Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana
- February 2022
- Case
Toraya
By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno
Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Pushing Past the Boundaries of ESG Investing: AQR Capital Management
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Richard B. Evans, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen
Cliff Asness was facing a dilemma into how he would plunge his hedge fund into the hottest investment area worldwide—ESG Investing. Founder and managing principal of AQR—one the most storied quantitative hedge funds in the world—Asness knew anything less than a big... View Details
- December 2021
- Case
The Instant Payment Mandate: The Central Bank of Brazil and Pix
By: Lauren Cohen and Spencer C. N. Hagist
João M. P. De Mello and his team at the Central Bank of Brazil are preparing a move that would seek to tilt the scales in favor of financial inclusion for the entire country. The innovation at hand is the unprecedented nation-wide instant payment scheme: Pix. The fruit... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised April 2022)
- Supplement
Tottenham Hotspur plc
By: Lauren Cohen, Joshua D. Coval and Christopher Malloy
- September 2021
- Supplement
Ensuring Your Family’s Future: The Alagil Family Office (B)
By: Lauren Cohen, Esel Çekin and Fares Khrais
- September 2021
- Case
Ensuring Your Family’s Future: The Alagil Family Office
By: Lauren Cohen, Esel Çekin and Fares Khrais
Muhammad Alagil was a second-generation leader in the well-known Alagil Family Group of businesses in Saudi Arabia and co-founder and chairman of its family office, Jarir Company for Commercial Investments (Jarir Investments). The case opens in 2021 with Alagil... View Details
- August 2021
- Article
Don't Take Their Word for It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun
We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their... View Details
- June 2021 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Equity Bank: Charting the Future
By: Lauren Cohen, Michael Chitavi and Spencer C. N. Hagist
After climbing the ranks among Kenya's financial institutions from 66th to 1st, and toppling a quarter of the market share held by mobile money giant Safaricom, CEO James Mwangi must now guide Equity Bank into its next stage of development beyond "Equity 3.0." Should... View Details