Publications

01 Dec 2005
News

One-on-One with Peter Cuneo

mentions a tireless vigilante: the Punisher. What is the motive behind Marvel’s decision to begin producing its own films? Creative control and a greater portion of the potential profits. When we came out of bankruptcy seven years ago we... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; comic books; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

July 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Cable & Wireless America

By: Guhan Subramanian and Eliot Sherman

Describes the auction of Cable & Wireless America (CWA), a bankrupt subsidiary of the British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless. While an initial "stalking-horse" bid valued the assets at $125 million, after a long day and night of bidding between eight... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Process

01 Dec 2008
News

No Easy Fix for the Financial Crisis

middle class.” Consumers Need More Protection Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren is a bankruptcy and commercial law expert and co-author of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Warren noted... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson;Martha Lagace; deregulation; moral hazard; the middle class; Finance

February 2010
Teaching Note

Saginaw Parts Co. and the General Motors Corp. Credit Default Swap (TN)

By: William E. Fruhan

Teaching Note for [210056]. View Details

Keywords: Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Law; Cost of Capital; United States

01 Mar 2010
Op-Ed

A Golden Opportunity for Ford and GM

Having weathered the 2008 crisis without U.S. government support, Ford has $23 billion in cash in the bank and a lineup of eco-friendly automobiles to which U.S. consumers are gravitating. GM only emerged from bankruptcy last July, when... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Auto

06 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Expensing Options Doesn’t Solve the Problem

company to transfer assets and liabilities to certain so-called special purpose entities (SPEs). According to the Powers report, which was published by a special committee of Enron's board after the company entered bankruptcy protection... View Details

Keywords: by William Sahlman

24 May 2017
News

John H. McArthur, MBA 1959, DBA 1963

keep the faculty engaged in something that is interesting and important.” McArthur’s influence outside of HBS is also significant, focusing on large-scale institutional reorganization. In the 1970s he served as a Trustee in Bankruptcy of... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

07 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 7

ownership influence Chapter 11 outcomes? To answer these questions, we construct a data set that identifies the entire capital structure for 136 companies filing for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection between 1998 and 2009 and that... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

06 Dec 2021
News

3-Minute Briefing: Bonnie Kintzer (MBA 1987)

I had worked at a consulting firm where Reader’s Digest was my client, so I got to learn a lot about the business and the people prior to joining the first time. Thankfully, I was not there during either of the company’s two bankruptcies. I left in 2007 and returned in... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie; publishing; digital transformation; change management; leadership; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

Article

Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors

By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson

General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Practices and Processes; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

November 1994
Case

Navistar International

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott

As a consequence of laying off half its workforce in a massive downsizing program, the company--a large manufacturer of medium and heavy trucks--struggles with a huge ($2.6 billion) liability for retiree medical costs. Although the company has promised its retirees... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Wages; Labor Unions; Legal Liability; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Restructuring

17 Aug 2011
News

Breath of Life

but brought back from the brink of bankruptcy by its current president David Green (MBA ’91). Explaining that a natural trachea is shaped by its “scaffold” (its framework of cartilage and muscle), the Wall Street Journal (July 8, 2011)... View Details

Keywords: stem cell research; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

Profile

Andres Sarmiento

Why was earning your MBA at Harvard Business School important to you? Working at American Airlines' through the bankruptcy process made me reconsider the form of impact that I intended to have. My career until that point had consisted in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technology; Services

01 Dec 2019
News

The Race Against Resistance

unsuccessfully. Kimble points to San Francisco–based Achaogen, which filed for bankruptcy last April despite securing regulatory approval for one of its antibiotic treatments in 2018. Given the catch-22s of making a profit on antibiotics,... View Details

Keywords: Lisa Scanlon Mogolov

November 1984 (Revised December 1988)
Case

Gulf Oil Corp.--Takeover

Gulf Oil was pressured into liquidation while under attack by Boone Pickens of Mesa Petroleum Co. Gulf management was unsure whether to sell out or take the firm private. A suitor, Standard Oil of California, tries to decide how much, if anything, to bid for the... View Details

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Bids and Bidding; Acquisition; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; United States