Publications

October 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Masdar City: Aiming for Sustainable and Profitable Real Estate

By: Boris Vallee and Fares Khrais

Masdar City broke ground in 2008 and was conceived by the Abu Dhabi government to be an international beacon of innovation in sustainable energy and real estate. It was also to be a profitable investment for the government. At first glance, the two goals pulled in... View Details

André Perold is a Founder, Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of HighVista Strategies, a Boston-based investment firm. HighVista focuses on investing in structurally inefficient public and private markets, including in life sciences, lower middle market private... View Details

Keywords: investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry

30 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

Vanguard, Trian And The Problem With 'Passive' Index Funds

of an index, regardless of its performance.” This is not the only way shareholders are reengaging with management to take more corporate control. Private equity investing allows investors to take a problematic View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

January 2022
Article

Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting

By: Erik Stafford

The contributions of asset selection and incremental leverage to buyout investment performance are more important than typically assumed or estimated to be. Buyout funds select small firms with distinct value characteristics. Public equities with these characteristics... View Details

Keywords: Replicating Portfolio; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

24 Mar 2013
News

A fresh take needed for risky funds

September 2017 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Asset Allocation at the Cook County Pension Fund

By: Emil Siriwardane, Juliane Begenau and Yuval Gonczarowski

Nickol Hackett, chief investment officer of the Cook County Pension Fund, is responsible for investing the fund’s $9 billion worth of assets on behalf of the employees of Cook County, Illinois. Like many other defined-benefit pensions at the time, the Cook County... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

October 2006
Case

Clearwire Corporation

By: Richard S. Ruback

Explores Clearwire's decision to fund its substantial capital investments through an initial public offering (IPO) or through private equity. Clearwire is developing and deploying a broadband wireless network using WiMAX technology. It had filed a registered statement... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technological Innovation; Initial Public Offering; Investment Portfolio; Telecommunications Industry

Brian Trelstad is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit and the Faculty Chair of the Advanced Leadership Initiative. He teaches elective courses on Social Entrepreneurship and Systems... View Details

Keywords: education industry; health care; service industry; emerging market private equity; private equity (other); venture capital industry

Awards

Fama-DFA Prize for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the Areas of Capital Markets and Asset Pricing

By: Josh Lerner

Second Place Winner of the 2009 Fama-DFA Prize for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the Areas of Capital Markets and Asset Pricing for his paper with Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, and David Scharfstein, "Venture Capital Investment... View Details

February 2004
Case

Bradman and Tendulkar, LLC

By: Ananth Raman and Vishal Gaur

An investment firm is trying to project inventory turns for Radio Shack, a chain of consumer electronics stores. The investment firm has access to public financial data but not to internal operational metrics. It needs to project inventory turns because inventory... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cash Flow; Demand and Consumers; Distribution Channels; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

2024
Working Paper

The Rise of Alternatives

By: Juliane Begenau, Pauline Liang and Emil Siriwardane

Since the 2000s, U.S. public pensions have shifted their risky investments towards alternative assets like private equity and hedge funds, some more aggressively than others. We explore several explanations for these cross-sectional trends, focusing on those implied by... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty

Read Now

2024
Working Paper

Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Philipp Chvanov

Private Equity (“PE”) received a 10-fold increase in capital flows since the Great Financial Crisis (“GFC”) Investors sought higher nominal returns relative to those they could obtain in the public capital markets. This paper questions the fundamental assumptions... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Financial Markets

SSRN

Read Now

15 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 15

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470905905,descCd-tableOfContents.html Working PapersComparing the Investment Behavior of Public and Private Firms Authors:John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

17 Jan 2007
Op-Ed

Learning from Private-Equity Boards

If Enron had been owned and controlled by a small group of private-equity investors, could the monitoring and control practices of a professionally run buyout shop have protected Enron's shareholders and employees from the problems that destroyed the company and... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm Salter; Financial Services

February 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

CalPERS Private Equity 2.0

By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Alys Ferragamo

Yup Kim, the Head of Investments, Private Equity at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), reflected on the pension fund’s private equity strategy. In July of 2022, the fund was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround strategy with the goal to... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Retirement; Leadership; Strategy; Public Sector

March 1994 (Revised December 1995)
Case

McArthur/Glen Realty Corp.

By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.

Jonathan Potter is considering an investment in the newly formed McArthur/Glen Real Estate Investment Trust. The case gives some background on real estate investment trusts and their history. Also discusses manufacturers' outlet shopping centers, the type of real... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Real Estate Industry