Publications

February 2019 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Pierre Foods Acquisition of Advance Foods (D-2): Credit Agreement—Lender Perspective

By: Guhan Subramanian and Mike Harmon

03 Dec 2008
What Do You Think?

Can Housing and Credit be “Nudged” Back to Health?

"... we need a carefully crafted, long term 'Social Engineering' campaign to transform the common mindset of people to foster a culture of thrift and prudence...." Others favored and suggested nudges. Peter Ubel argued that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

07 May 2024
Blog Post

Opportunity to Offset Travel Emissions with Carbon Credits that Meet HBS Criteria

credits sold by projects that reduce GHG in the atmosphere and may also provide other societal benefits in areas such as equity and health. Not all carbon credits used for offsetting are created equal -... View Details

25 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

We May Have Taken Too Much Credit for Easing Workplace Segregation

workplaces started getting rid of minority workers in favor of whites. Instead, in the 1980s, more minority-only firms began emerging, and we now see a division of labor in terms of race: segregated workplaces that are majority-white,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

Speculation and Credit - Coin and Conscience – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

Vanity and Virtue Misers, Moneylenders, and Thieves Money Devil Biblical and Mythological Scenes Love and Money Politics and War Louis-Philippe Speculation and Credit Bankers, Financiers, and Statesmen Stock Exchanges printer-friendly... View Details

October 2020
Article

Corporate Legal Structure and Bank Loan Spread

By: Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi

This study examines how a corporate legal structure may affect borrowing costs. Corporate legal structure refers to the legal fragmentation of a firm into multiple, separately incorporated entities. This fragmentation is bound to be a factor when lenders determine the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Legal Structure; Subsidiaries; Bank Loans; Minority Interest; Credit Risk; Organizational Structure; Business Subsidiaries; Financing and Loans

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2013
Chapter

Weighted Generating Functions for Type II Lattices and Codes

By: Noam D. Elkies and Scott Duke Kominers

We give a new structural development of harmonic polynomials on Hamming space, and harmonic weight enumerators of binary linear codes, that parallels one approach to harmonic polynomials on Euclidean space and weighted theta functions of Euclidean lattices. Namely, we... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods

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March 1997 (Revised January 1999)
Case

SureCut Shears, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

A bank loan officer must determine whether to waive convenants and extend terms on a line of credit granted to SureCut Shears. At issue is whether the inability of SureCut to pay down its line of credit is due to a temporary cyclical downturn or other long-term... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Finance; Performance; Problems and Challenges

October 2010 (Revised November 2010)
Case

Belco Global Foods

By: C. Fritz Foley and Matthew Johnson

This case introduces students to the fundamental issues that managers face when deciding what international trade finance terms to use when transacting with other firms. In late 2009, Pam Arnold, the head of global credit at Belco Global Foods, must decide which trade... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Credit; Financing and Loans; International Finance; Globalized Firms and Management; Food and Beverage Industry

August 2015
Article

Poultry in Motion: A Study of International Trade Finance Practices

By: Pol Antràs and C. Fritz Foley

This paper analyzes the financing terms that support international trade and sheds light on how these terms shape the impact of economic shocks on trade. Analysis of transaction-level data from a U.S.-based exporter of frozen and refrigerated food products, primarily... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; International Finance; Financing and Loans; Trade

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August 2020 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Nubank: Democratizing Financial Services

By: Michael Chu, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

Nubank, a wholly-digital solution created to disrupt Brazilian banking, with 6 million clients and a $4 billion valuation after five years, must decide whether to expand to Mexico. The company was founded in São Paulo in 2013 by Colombian-born David Vélez to seize what... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Financial Inclusion; Digital Banking; Credit Cards; Banks and Banking; Disruption; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; South America; Brazil; North America; Mexico

October 2010
Supplement

Belco Global Foods: Spreadsheet Supplement (CW)

By: C. Fritz Foley and Matthew Johnson

This case introduces students to the fundamental issues that managers face when deciding what international trade finance terms to use when transacting with other firms. In late 2009, Pam Arnold, the Head of Global Credit at Belco Global Foods must decide which trade... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Decisions; Trade; Financial Strategy; Governance Compliance; Managerial Roles; Market Transactions

January 2009 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Necessity and Invention: Monetary Policy Innovation and the Subprime Crisis

By: Aldo Musacchio and Dante Roscini

This case describes the efforts of Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to improve liquidity in money markets during the subprime crisis. The case explains the four main new tools for monetary policy (or quantitative easing) the Federal Reserve has used... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Money; Financial Liquidity; Central Banking; Policy; Business and Government Relations

03 Oct 2008
News

Wall Street's Latest Crisis of Leadership

2020
Working Paper

The Myth of the Lead Arranger’s Share

By: Kristian Blickle, Quirin Fleckenstein, Sebastian Hillenbrand and Anthony Saunders

We make use of Shared National Credit Program (SNC) data to examine syndicated loans in which the lead arranger retains no stake. We find that the lead arranger sells its entire loan share for 27 percent of term loans and 48 percent of Term B loans, typically shortly... View Details

Keywords: Syndicated Loans; Lead Arrangers; Financing and Loans

SSRN

December 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

FIRA: Confronting the Mexican Agricultural Crisis

By: James E. Austin, Michael Chu and Cate Reavis

In fall 2003, Mexico's agriculture sector was facing a crisis brought on largely by a surge in cheap U.S. imports resulting from NAFTA and inaccessible and/or expensive terms of credit for Mexican agricultural producers. It was getting harder for Mexican producers to... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Public Sector; Trade; Financial Instruments; Crisis Management; Markets; Strategic Planning; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry