Publications

February 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Hardina Smythe and the Healthcare Investment Conundrum

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Ann Leamon and Lisa Strope

Hardina Smythe, a recent MBA graduate, has just joined a top-tier venture capital firm in the difficult environment of late 2010. Her first assignment is to evaluate three different deals and make recommendations to the partners. Each potential investment has strengths... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Asset Management; Private Equity; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Financial Services Industry

March 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

The Blackstone Group's IPO

By: Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Steven Schwarzman, Chairman of the Blackstone Group, has just learned that an investment group associated with the government of China wants to buy the majority of Blackstone's leveraged IPO. As he considers how to respond to this offer, Schwarzman reviews the firm's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Financial Liquidity; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Ownership Stake; Business and Stakeholder Relations

January 2001 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Return Logic, Inc. (B)

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Michele Lutz

Highlights how multiple rounds of financing work in practice and illustrates how terms agreed to in early-stage financing deals have an impact in later financing rounds. Also illustrates ethical issues that entrepreneurs confront as they build "dot-com" ventures. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment Funds; Private Equity; Internet and the Web; Negotiation Deal; Entrepreneurship; Ethics

Fast Answer

Social Entrepreneurship & Systems Change

organization raises charitable funds to invest equity and debt in enterprises serving low-income people Ashoka - international organization that promotes social entrepreneurship by affiliating individual social entrepreneurs... View Details

06 Dec 2021
News

Turning Point: Makeover

myself “Chief Treasure Hunter” because I felt unworthy of the CEO title. I asked Brad to take the title, but he refused. He believed in me so much that I began to believe in myself. Eventually, we brought in private equity partners who... View Details

Keywords: entrepreneurship; leadership; purpose; Asian American; beauty industry; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Manufacturing

01 May 2013
News

Patricia F. Bilden & Philip M. Bilden, MBA 1991

closest friends and have enriched our family’s life over the years.” The relationships Bilden formed at HBS have also shaped his career. After completing his MBA in 1991, he joined a promising firm in Boston founded by HBS graduates that is today a worldwide leader in... View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

From venture capitalist to 'compassionate capitalist'

chairman of Apax Partners Worldwide, one of the world’s leading private equity investment groups. In 2007, he cofounded Social Finance, a London-based nonprofit that is advancing ways to apply market principles to solving social problems... View Details

01 Feb 2001
News

A Bankable Trust

Carla Ann Harris (MBA 1987) is a managing director at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, in charge of the marketing and execution of new-issue equity financing in the technology, media, telecommunications, transportation, industrial, and... View Details

Keywords: Arts, Entertainment

September 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Yale University Investments Office: June 2003

By: Josh Lerner

The Yale Investments Office must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments--hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and so forth. Considers the risks and benefits of a different asset allocation strategy.... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Assets; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Investment Funds; Resource Allocation; Partners and Partnerships; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; Education Industry

April 2020 (Revised April 2023)
Supplement

TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increase ten times, and both EBITDA and revenues had grown... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Ethics; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Performance Evaluation; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States