Publications

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June 2020
Case

Recovering Trust After Corporate Misconduct at Wells Fargo

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Jonah S. Goldberg

The case describes widespread misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank in the period leading up to 2017 and the company’s subsequent attempts to improve internal controls, company culture, and corporate governance. The case examines the potential causes of large scale... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Internal Controls; Banks and Banking; Crime and Corruption; Corporate Governance; Organizational Culture; Governance Compliance; Management Systems; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement; Governing and Advisory Boards

October 1993
Case

Analyst's Dilemma (A), The

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Jerry Useem

A young investment banker returns home one night to find that her roommate and best friend has been laid off from Universal Bank because Universal is shutting down its capital finance group. Her roommate makes her promise to keep this information confidential because... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Leveraged Buyouts; Conflict of Interests; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk and Uncertainty

18 Feb 2011
Working Paper Summaries

A Behavioral Model of Demandable Deposits and Its Implications for Financial Regulation

Keywords: by Julio J. Rotemberg; Financial Services

Research Summary

Anti-Competitive Financial Contracting

Joint work with Giacinta Cestone, Institut d'Analisi Economica, Barcelona

This paper presents the first model where entry deterrence takes place through financial rather than product-market channels. In standard models of the interaction between product and... View Details

June 2014
Article

Frictions in Shadow Banking: Evidence from the Lending Behavior of Money Market Funds

By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam

We document the consequences of money market fund risk taking during the European sovereign debt crisis. Using a novel data set of security-level holdings of prime money market funds, we show that funds with large exposures to risky Eurozone banks suffered significant... View Details

Keywords: Money Market Mutual Funds; European Sovereign Debt Crisis; Runs; Contagion; Risk Taking; Investment Funds; Financial Crisis; Europe

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11 Sep 2020
Video

James Mwangi

James Mwangi, CEO of Kenya’s Equity Bank, which has one of the largest customer bases of any bank in Africa, discusses how the Equity Bank model evolved through learning both from Asian companies and from the bank’s own customers. View Details

October 2019
Case

Kaspi.kz IPO

By: Victoria Ivashina and Esel Çekin

This case follows Kaspi.kz, a private equity (Baring Vostok) co-owned retail bank in Central Asia that evolved into a fintech, payments and e-commerce company. It provides insights into private equity financing, portfolio company management, and initial public offering... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Central Asia

Boris Vallée is an Associate Professor in the Finance Unit. He teaches Real Property in the MBA elective curriculum, and previously taught the Finance II course in the MBA required curriculum.

Professor’s Vallée’s research traces the motives behind and the... View Details

24 Oct 2018
Blog Post

The Energy & Environment Club

Green Bank to operations at Tesla. The 40+ first-year MBA students in attendance were eager to learn what to expect from the internship search cycle, from generating a list of target companies to nailing... View Details

June 2020
Article

U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles

By: Falk Bräuning and Victoria Ivashina

Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle,... View Details

Keywords: Global Business Cycle; Monetary Policy; Reaching For Yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets

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Liz Calder is a second-year PhD student in Strategy at Harvard Business School. Her research interests include innovation throughout the industry life cycle, strategic alliance formation, and entrepreneurial growth.

Prior to undertaking her doctoral... View Details

2022
Article

Regulatory Treatment of Changes in Fair Value and the Composition of Banks' Investment Portfolios

By: Michael Iselin, Jung Koo Kang and Joshua Madsen

In their implementation of Basel III, U.S. bank regulators are again including changes in the fair value of available-for-sale (AFS) debt securities in Tier 1 capital, but only for the largest U.S. banks. This paper investigates a potential impact of expanding this... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; SFAS 115; Basel III; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Banks and Banking; Debt Securities; Credit; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment Portfolio; Decision Making; Banking Industry; United States

SSRN

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25 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

The Dark Side of Fintech Borrowing

from one of the three major credit reporting agencies over several years. This offered an in-depth look at borrowers that either used a fintech company or a bank to obtain a personal loan. (A personal loan... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Banking; Banking

June 2010 (Revised July 2012)
Supplement

Dubai: Debt, Development, and Crisis (C)

By: Aldo Musacchio, Andrew Christopher Goodman and Claire K. Qureshi

On November 25, 2009, the city state of Dubai stunned markets by announcing that Dubai World, its flagship state holding company, would seek a six month "standstill" on at least $4 billion U.S. dollars of its $26 billion in debt obligations. This case describes Dubai's... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Investment; Emerging Markets; Trade; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Development Economics; Financial Crisis; State Ownership; Sovereign Finance; Business Strategy; Dubai

2006
Other Unpublished Work

Does Banks' Corporate Control Benefit Firms? Evidence from US Banks' Control over Firms' Voting Rights

By: Joao A.C. Santos and Kristin Wilson

In this paper we examine the importance of banks' corporate control over their borrowers by investigating the loan pricing effect of banks' voting stakes in borrowers. We exploit the fact that banks may hold shares of firms in a fiduciary capacity to identify a clean... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Corporate Governance; Commercial Banking; Banking Industry; United States

SSRN

14 Feb 2017
News

There is massive invasion of ethics in India’s large corporate houses

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

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Decision Making; Market Entry and Exit; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Institutions; Economics; Kenya

18 Aug 2009
News

Disclose the fair value of complex securities

August 2021 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Perfect Diary (完美日记)

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta

Jinfeng (David) Huang founded Yatsen Holding Limited in 2016 and launched the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) cosmetic brand, Perfect Diary, in 2017. Perfect Diary used social influencers or key opinion leaders (KOL) to successfully build brand awareness and to grow... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Social Influencers; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Competitive Strategy; Brands and Branding; Expansion; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Asia