Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,761)
- Faculty Publications (921)
- 2014
- Working Paper
The Cost of Friendship
By: Paul A. Gompers, Vladimir Mukharlyamov and Yuhai Xuan
We investigate how personal characteristics affect people's desire to collaborate and whether this attraction enhances or detracts from performance in venture capital. We find that venture capitalists who share the same ethnic, educational, or career background are... View Details
- 2014
- Article
The Growth and Limits of Arbitrage: Evidence from Short Interest
By: Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
We develop a novel methodology to infer the amount of capital allocated to quantitative equity arbitrage strategies. Using this methodology, which exploits time-variation in the cross section of short interest, we document that the amount of capital devoted to value... View Details
- March 2014 (Revised May 2014)
- Teaching Note
The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal
By: Lucy White and Benjamin C. Esty
On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details
Keywords: Proxy Contest; Proxy Battle; Proxy Advisor; ISS; Glass Lewis ＆ Co.; Hedge Fund; Short Selling; Share Lending; Telecommunications; Voting Rights; Empty Voting; Equity Decoupling; Share Unification; Dual Class Shares; Canada; Exchange Ratio; Shareholder Activism; Shareholder Votes; Investment Activism; Public Equity; Capital Structure; Investment Return; Corporate Governance; Corporate Finance; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation; Telecommunications Industry; Canada; British Columbia; United States; New York (city, NY)
- March 2014 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
ACA and the Union Bank Acquisition
By: Josh Lerner and Nathaniel Burbank
Okey Enelamah is the CEO of the African Capital Alliance (ACA), a private equity firm based in Nigeria. ACA has spent more than a year arranging a $500 million consortium bid to acquire and recapitalize Union Bank, Nigeria's sixth largest bank. Several weeks before the... View Details
- March 2014
- Technical Note
Venture Capital Investment in the Clean Energy Sector
By: Ramana Nanda and Shikhar Ghosh
In this note, we examine the extent to which venture capital is adequately positioned for the rapid commercialization of clean energy technologies in the United States. The need for a revolution in clean energy is driven not just by environmental consequences of energy... View Details
- February 2014
- Background Note
Raising Startup Capital
By: Jeffrey Bussgang
Entrepreneurs typically focus their full energies on business-building. But raising capital is a core part of building a valuable business. Developing expertise in raising capital is more than a necessary evil, it is a competitive weapon. Master it and you will be in a... View Details
Keywords: Fund Raising; Venture Capital Term Sheet; Venture Creation/development; Venture Investing; Venture Philanthropy; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurs; Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act; Non-equity Financing; Convertible Notes; Convertible Debt; Debt Financing; Raising Capital; National Venture Capital Association; Venture Capital Firm Compensation; Crowdfunding; Crowd-funding; Startup; Start-up; Startup Management; Startups; Angel Investors; Angels; Accelerator; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Financial Services Industry; United States
- February 2014 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
ISS A/S: The Buyout
By: Clayton Rose, Carsten Bienz and Lucy White
Provides the opportunity to value a leveraged buy-out; and to examine the nature and extent of a company's responsibilities to its bondholders. Here, the context is a "going private" transaction in Europe, where the financing plan called for the addition to the... View Details
Keywords: LBO; Private Equity; Contracts; Global Business; International Business; Finance; Ethics; Law; Service Industry; Europe
- 2014
- Article
Executive Compensation and Human Capital Investments Through Industry Selection
By: Boris Groysberg and Eric Lin
We use proprietary data capturing compensation levels of executives placed by a global search firm to investigate how executives evaluate rewards and risks of human capital investment choices. Our findings suggest that more isolated industries with lower opportunity to... View Details
- January 2014
- Case
Maricopa, Inc.: Finding the Right Treatment for Growth
The founders of Maricopa, Inc., a startup that sold proprietary hair-care products directly to salons, were preparing a board presentation to address the young company's inability to meet financial projections. While the products had caught on with customers, the... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
Andreessen Horowitz
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Liz Kind
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm launched in 2009, has quickly broken into the VC industry's top ranks, in terms of its ability to invest in Silicon Valley's most promising startups. The case recounts the firm's history; describes its co-founders'... View Details
- January 2014
- Teaching Plan
MedImmune Ventures
By: Richard Hamermesh and Andrew Otazo
"MedImmune Ventures" highlights the problems faced by corporate venture capital firms, the challenges of investing in early-stage healthcare, and the difficulty of operating in distant markets. View Details
- January 2014
- Supplement
J.C. Penney's 'Fair and Square' Strategy (C): Back to the Future
By: Elie Ofek, Jill Avery and Jose B. Alvarez
Rehired in April 2013, Myron E. "Mike" Ullman III was brought back to stabilize the retailer's business. Under Ron Johnson's "Fair and Square" program, sales had declined rapidly and quarterly losses and expensive capital investments had put severe pressure on cash... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis in Italy
By: Dante Roscini
The financial crisis hit Italy harder than many other Eurozone countries. In part this was due to the fact that the crisis came upon a system that was weakened by years of sub-par economic growth. One of the several endogenous factors that explain the stagnation of the... View Details
- December 30, 2013
- Other Article
Fundamental Purpose
Directing capital to companies that can use it productively
is ultimately the most profound benefit
investors can have on society. View Details
- December 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Case
Viva Macau (A)
By: Dante Roscini and G. A. Donovan
A fast-growing Macau-based airline backed by private US investors faces a dramatic expropriation in the wake of the first change of head of government since the former Portuguese colony became a Special Administrative Region of China. The case allows students to... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Valuing Yahoo! in 2013
By: Luis M. Viceira and Atul Khosla
In late July 2013, Danielle Engle, Managing Director of Clairemont Capital, was contemplating what to do about a large investment her fund had in the stock of Yahoo! Inc. In mid-2012, Clairemont had invested nearly $75M in Yahoo! after the tech company settled a highly... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised January 2015)
- Case
Restructuring JAL
By: Malcolm Baker, Adi Sunderam, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno
Hideo Seto, the recently appointed chairman of the investment committee of the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation, must decide whether to push JAL group, Japan's largest airline, into bankruptcy or to act as a sponsor in an out-of-court restructuring. The... View Details
- November 2013
- Supplement
Arch Wireless, Inc. (B): Food for Vultures
By: Stuart C. Gilson
In 2002, a hedge fund investor acquires the distressed bank debt of a bankrupt wireless paging company and converts his holding into common stock of the reorganized entity. Determining his likely return from this investment is challenging, given that the entire... View Details
- Winter 2013
- Article
Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk-Taking
By: Daniel Cohen, Aiyesha Dey and Thomas Lys
We investigate the mechanism through which the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) was associated with changes in corporate investment strategies. We document that the passage of the governance regulations in SOX was followed by a significant decline in pay‐performance... View Details
- November 2013
- Article
Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
We find that VC-backed firms receiving their initial investment in hot markets are more likely to go bankrupt, but conditional on going public are valued higher on the day of their IPO, have more patents, and have more citations to their patents. Our results suggest... View Details