Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,315)
- Faculty Publications (261)
- Article
Creating Value Together
By: Maxim Sytch and Ranjay Gulati
Conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid growing dependent on their business partners. If one company, the thinking goes, grows too dependent on a counterpart by getting the entire input for a particular activity from it and is not able to switch... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It
By: Arthur C. Brooks
Who are the happiest Americans? Surveys show that religious people think they are happier than secularists, and secularists think they are happier than religious people. Liberals believe they are happier than conservatives, and conservatives disagree. In fact, almost... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
Mellon Financial and The Bank of New York
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Ryan Taliaferro
Bob Kelly, the new CEO of Mellon Financial, is considering the terms of a proposed "merger of equals" with The Bank of New York, just before the final Board meeting to approve the deal. The combination offers a great strategic fit, and the expected synergies are large.... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
Opportunity Partners
By: Robin Greenwood and James Quinn
Philip Goldstein, the principal in a growing hedge fund and prominent activist investor, has taken a position in a Mexico-based closed-end fund. Following a hard-fought proxy contest in which he advocated for management to eliminate the fund's substantial discount,... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things
By: Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman and Willy C. Shih
Most companies aren't half as innovative as their senior executives want them to be (or as their marketing claims suggest they are). What's stifling innovation? There are plenty of usual suspects, but the authors finger three financial tools as key accomplices.... View Details
- October 2007
- Case
Colgate Max Fresh: Global Brand Roll-Out
By: John A. Quelch
In February 2005, Nigel Burton, in his third year as president of global oral care at Colgate-Palmolive Company (CP), had every reason to feel optimistic. Worldwide market shares were strong and Colgate Max Fresh (CMF), a new toothpaste that had helped drive Colgate to... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
AFL-CIO: Office of Investment and Home Depot
By: Rakesh Khurana and James Weber
Describes the AFL-CIO: Office of Investments activities in their campaign to improve governance at Home Depot by calling attention to Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation package and the company's poor performance. The AFL-CIO Office of Investments advocates... View Details
- January 2007
- Article
Acquisitions and Firm Growth: Creating Unilever's Ice Cream and Tea Business
By: G. Jones and Peter Miskell
This article provides a longitudinal case study of the use of acquisitions by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever to build the world's largest ice cream and tea businesses. The study supports recent resource-based theory which argues that complementary rather than... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised December 2011)
- Case
HCA, Inc. (A)
Focuses on the buyout of HCA by three private equity firms: Bain Capital, KKR, and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity. It provides an opportunity to discuss a variety of issues related to leveraged buyouts including the process, the role of private equity, the... View Details
- April 2006 (Revised April 2012)
- Background Note
The Role of Private Equity Firms in Merger and Acquisition Transactions
Explores the importance of private equity firms in merger and acquisitions activity around the globe. In many countries, these firms now account for one quarter of the total merger and acquisition activity of all firms. The larger private equity firms generate fees for... View Details
- February 2006 (Revised October 2006)
- Case
The Children's Investment Fund, 2005
By: Randolph B. Cohen and Joshua B. Sandbulte
TCI, The Children's Investment Fund, is a London-based hedge fund. The firm donates a significant fraction of the fees it earns to a charitable foundation. In 2005, TCI took a large stake in Deutsche Borse, the stock exchange in Frankfurt. Its battle with management... View Details
- January 2006 (Revised February 2006)
- Case
Deutsche Borse and the European Markets
By: Dwight B. Crane and Monika Stachowiak
In December 2004, Deutsche Borse proposed an offer for the London Stock Exchange. Some shareholders opposed the acquisition, leading to the offer's withdrawal and replacement of management, including the CEO and board members. Written from the viewpoint of Deutsche... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Wintel: Cooperation or Conflict
We study the incentives of complementors (producers of complementary products) to cooperate vs. compete and how these interact. In a system of complements, like the PC, the value of the final product depends on how well the different components work together. This, in... View Details
- February 2005 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Arauco (A): Forward Integration or Horizontal Expansion?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Jorge Tarzijan and Jordan Mitchell
Celulosa Arauco is a major Chilean producer of market pulp and wood products. Owning over 1.2 million hectares of forest in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the company's key advantage is the ideal growing conditions in which the company's forests are located. As of... View Details
- November 2004
- Case
Deere & Company
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Hal Hogan
John Deere & Co. wants to improve shareholder value and provide incentives to do so. The task is difficult in a volatile agriculture and construction industry. It also wants to be more global and provide machinery that traces commodities from the field to the consumer. View Details
- October 2004 (Revised July 2011)
- Case
AT&T 2000-2004
By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kerry Herman
Provides an update on CEO Michael Armstrong's "Project Grand Slam" strategy to build the value of AT&T by offering a complete, integrated telecommunications solution to both corporate and residential customers, including wireless and wire line telephone, Internet,... View Details
- May 2004 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Ultra: The Quest for Leadership (A)
By: Dwight B. Crane and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
Ultra is one of a small group of competing Brazilian petrochemical companies, each of which buys raw material and is a minority owner of Copene, a "cracking" company that provides ethylene and other materials. Because of an industry restructuring, an auction of shares... View Details
- February 2004
- Case
Czech Mate: CME and Vladimir Zelezny (A)
By: Mihir A. Desai, Alberto Moel and Kathleen Luchs
This case examines how insiders can expropriate value from shareholders in emerging markets when property rights are ill-defined. As such, it provides a platform for considering how institutions and legal rules impact financing patterns and economic outcomes. CME,... View Details
- September 2002 (Revised March 2003)
- Technical Note
Technical Note on Equity-Linked Consideration, Part 1: All-Stock Deals
What the acquiring company pays for a target in a merger or acquisition is called "consideration." Consideration can be in the form of cash, shares, or a combination of cash and shares. During the 1990s, equity-linked consideration became the dominant method of payment... View Details
- September 2002 (Revised March 2003)
- Technical Note
Technical Note on Equity-Linked Consideration, Part 2: Announcement Effects
The announcement of merger or acquisition conveys new information to the capital markets. Shareholders and portfolio managers assess the news and trade on the basis of their new appraisals of value. Thus, from the actual Pstks of the two companies one can infer from... View Details