Publications

April 1998 (Revised November 1999)
Case

Hamilton Financial Investments: A Franchise Built on Trust

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Provides a vehicle for students to evaluate risk management in the fast-paced mutual funds industry. A new risk manager has been hired to install new management controls and procedures. A series of decisions will determine how much business and franchise risk the... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Management Teams; Managerial Roles; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Funds; Performance Evaluation; Corporate Strategy; Change Management; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry

April 2006 (Revised April 2012)
Background Note

The Role of Private Equity Firms in Merger and Acquisition Transactions

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

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

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Investment Funds; Value Creation

April 2011 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Securities Lending After the Financial Crisis

By: Robert C. Pozen and Gayle Hameister

In April 2009, Wendy Jefferson had just returned to her office following a whirlwind day of meetings with her newest client, Star Advisor. Jefferson, a financial services consultant, was eager to dig into the information provided to her and her team about the Star... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Debt Securities; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information

April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Public Equities Impact Investing at BlackRock

By: Shawn A. Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi, Michael Norris and John Masko

In early 2021, BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM)—sought to become a leader in promoting environmental and social sustainability. Over the previous ten years, CEO Larry Fink had written an annual open letter to... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Renewable Energy; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Equity; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Management; Investment Funds; Investment Return; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Financial Services Industry; United States

February 2010 (Revised July 2010)
Case

Barclays Wealth: Reignite WAR or Launch AlphaStream?

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Elisa Farri

In late January 2009, Thomas Fekete, managing director at Barclays Wealth in London, redeemed the most illiquid positions in the so-called Wealth Absolute Return Fund (WAR), one of Barclays Wealth's most promising offshore funds of hedge funds, and halted the Fund's... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Financial Liquidity; International Finance; Investment Funds; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; London

Emily McComb is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance Unit at HBS, teaching "Finance 2" in the required curriculum of the MBA program, as well as a co-leader of the HBS Impact Investment Fund in the elective curriculum. Prior to joining the HBS faculty in 2017, Emily was... View Details

Keywords: financial services; health care

29 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Two Case Studies on the Financing of Forest Conservation

Keywords: by Andrew Baxter, Connor Cash, Josh Lerner, and Ratnika Prasad

January 2020 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

December 2000 (Revised February 2002)
Case

Pine Street Capital

A technology hedge fund is trying to decide whether and/or how to hedge equity market risk. Its hedging choices are short-selling and options. The fund has just gone through one of the most volatile periods in NASDAQ's history, it is trying to decide whether it should... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Investment Funds

July 2003 (Revised June 2010)
Case

FrontPoint Partners

By: Jay O. Light

A hedge fund platform, a new and unique kind of asset management firm, contemplates various client markets for its services. View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment; Demand and Consumers; Digital Platforms; Service Delivery; Financial Services Industry

Find at Harvard

Career Coach

Madhav Datt

Madhav is a startup founder and tech product manager. He worked as Product Manager at Google where he launched and scaled B2B AI product from 0 -> $645M incremental ARR. Prior to that he was a Quant Researcher in US Equities at... View Details

13 May 2015
News

Activists losing mojo?

November 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

HP Nanotech: Partnership with CNSI

Stan Williams, leading nanotech researcher at Hewlett Packard Laboratories, must decide whether to renew the firm's sponsorship of California NanoSystems Institute, spend the funds on internal R&D, or fund foreign universities. Illustrates the challenge of managing... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Partners and Partnerships; Investment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Business and Community Relations; Financial Strategy; Technology Industry; California

July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup

By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Governance Compliance; Accrual Accounting; Financial Services Industry; United States

14 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 14, 2007

including sovereign capital structure arbitrage. Second, it provides a new framework for analysis and management of sovereign wealth funds being created by many emerging market and resource-rich countries.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2012
Other Unpublished Work

What Are We Meeting For? The Consequences of Private Meetings with Investors

By: Eugene F. Soltes and David H. Solomon

Executives of publicly-traded firms spend considerable time meeting privately with investors, despite regulation restricting their ability to convey material nonpublic information. Using a set of records of all one-on-one meetings between senior management and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Investment Funds; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Management Teams; Public Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations

SSRN

July 2010 (Revised December 2011)
Case

Controlling Hot Money

By: Robert C. Pozen

The manager of the Japan Equities Fund is faced with an increase in "hot money" moving quickly in and out of the Fund. This short-term trading is an attempt to take advantage of the difference between the closing times of the Tokyo and New York Stock Exchanges. The CFO... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; International Finance; Investment Funds; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Market Timing; Market Transactions; Financial Services Industry; New York (city, NY)

2008
Working Paper

Inexperienced Investors and Bubbles

By: Robin Greenwood and Stefan Nagel

We use mutual fund manager data from the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers' investment experience, we find that around the peak of the... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Stocks; Information Technology; Price Bubble; Asset Management; Experience and Expertise