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HBS Alumni Conference: Accelerating Climate Solutions - Alumni

decarbonized future? How can we–and must we–reimagine our approaches to finance to accomplish our climate goals? This session will demonstrate how financiers along the capital stack are examining climate risk, return, and opportunity to... View Details

June 2021 (Revised November 2024)
Case

MicroStrategy: Accounting for Cryptocurrency

By: Jonas Heese and Annelena Lobb

On February 15, 2021, Alina Moss, an analyst who covered the technology company MicroStrategy, pondered a rise in MicroStrategy’s share price. Moss had dialed into the company earnings call. When it ended, Moss had more questions than answers. MicroStrategy had... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Share Price; Electronic Commerce; Intangible Assets; Assets; Accounting; Financial Statements; Financial Management; Financial Reporting; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce

February 2020
Case

Halftime for Heidelberg

By: Debora L. Spar

The case follows President Rob Huntington as he seeks to find a viable way forward for Heidelberg University. Located in Tiffin, Ohio, Heidelberg is a small, private, four-year university. As with many similar institutions of higher education, it currently faces a... View Details

Keywords: University; University Administration; University Endowment; Endowments; Brand Management; Higher Education; Strategic Planning; Brands and Branding; Education Industry; Ohio

12 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 12

more likely to use equity in the transaction, and buy companies in a related industry. The market tends to react more negatively to the announcement of the acquisition of a venture capital-backed company, but the long-run stock View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2025
Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa's Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details

21 Jul 2009
First Look

First Look: July 21

ratings play an important role in the financial system, but investors and regulators who use ratings cannot easily verify their quality, and ratings are paid for by the firms whose bonds are rated. The provision of quality ratings is at... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 2006 (Revised April 2007)
Case

Ayala Corporation

Ayala Corporation is the oldest conglomerate in the Philippines and has been controlled by the Zobel de Ayala family for seven generations. Over the past 25 years, Ayala has evolved from a real estate family business into a highly diversified and professionally managed... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Family Business; Business Conglomerates; Valuation; Financial Strategy; Public Ownership; Real Estate Industry; Philippines

12 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 12, 2008

with strategy-proofness and stability, and direct attention to some open questions. Does Individual Performance Affect Entrepreneurial Mobility? Empirical Evidence from the Financial Analysis Market Authors:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 8, 2008

he says, will become longer, fatter, and more profitable. Elberse set out to investigate whether Anderson's long-tail theory is actually playing out in today's markets. She focused on the music and home-video industries—two markets that... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Monetary Policy Drivers of Bond and Equity Risks

Keywords: by John Y. Campbell, Carolin E. Pflueger & Luis M. Viceira

September–October 2020
Article

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

SSRN

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2016
Working Paper

The Climate Custodians

By: Robert G. Eccles and Tim Youmans

Can custody banks become key players in climate change? Custody banks joining the battle against climate change will signal a significant shift in governance ideology for this highly regulated industry so critical to the global financial system. While global custody... View Details

Keywords: Pollutants; Climate Change; Capital Markets; Investment Banking; Institutional Investing; Policy

SSRN

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09 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

wages—when their doing so seems like more of a marketing ploy than a substantive effort to address the underlying problems. Very few of these programs require third-party verification. But I suspect that to really deliver on the promise... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

Becoming an Entrepreneur - Alumni

choose your path For many HBS MBA candidates, entrepreneurship rivals general management, consulting, and financial services as a meaningful career path. But by definition, considering entrepreneurship means pursuing something new, and by... View Details

Web

HBS Entrepreneurship Summit - Alumni

Getting to Product Market Fit Hiring Fast and Firing Faster Life as an Entrepreneur Managing Growth vs. Profitability Managing Pivots and Setbacks Negotiating Partnerships Builders - Small Group Discussions: Builder/Founder Relationships... View Details

27 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 27, 2007

small changes in financial imperfections can give rise to large changes in price. We develop tests of this alternative against the null that the supply of intermediary capital is perfectly elastic. We take the U.S. catastrophe reinsurance... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

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

10 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

High Note: Managing the Medici String Quartet

themselves avoiding the music because they were terrified. When they finally decided to take it on, they thought it would require a certain amount of time, and believed they had sufficient cash reserves. But the preparation process turned out to take longer, and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Music

October 2015
Case

A Challenger's Strategy: Pinar Abay at ING Bank Turkey

By: Paul M. Healy, Gautam Mukunda and Esel Çekin

In 2013, Pinar Abay was appointed as the CEO of ING Bank Turkey. At 34, she was the youngest bank CEO in Turkey's history. Her appointment raised eyebrows because of her youth and because her career at McKinsey had given her no day-to-day bank management experience.... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Change Management; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Emerging Markets; Transformation; Banks and Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; Banking Industry; Turkey