Publications

December 2009 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Curt Schilling's Next Pitch

By: Noam T. Wasserman, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Rachel Gordon

As his major-league pitching career was starting to wind down in 2006, baseball all-star Curt Schilling decided to become an entrepreneur. Looking to focus his tenacity and his passion for online role-playing games on a new challenge, he founded an online gaming... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Groups and Teams; Video Game Industry

Carl Kester is a Baker Foundation Professor and the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Finance Unit. He served as Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs (2006-2010), Chairman of the... View Details

Keywords: asset management; banking; education industry; financial services; investment banking industry; pharmaceuticals; private equity (LBO funds)

July 2012
Case

Owen's Precision Machining

By: Ramana Nanda and James McQuade

For the second time in fourteen months, Christopher Owen, the second-generation owner of Owen's Precision Machining (OPM), found himself running out of cash. Owen wondered what he was doing wrong. How much additional money would he need to raise to get OPM through the... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Cash Flow; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Problems and Challenges; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance; Manufacturing Industry; Massachusetts

2005
Other Unpublished Work

Corporate Financing Decisions When Investors Take the Path of Least Resistance

By: Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval and Jeremy Stein

We explore the consequences for corporate financial policy that arise when investors exhibit inertial behavior. One implication of investor inertia is that, all else equal, a firm pursuing a strategy of equity-financed growth will prefer a stock-for-stock merger to... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Behavior; Stocks; Mergers and Acquisitions; Policy; Investment; Financial Institutions; Equity; Corporate Finance

Read Now

18 Apr 2007
HBS Case

How Magazine Luiza Courts the Poor

credit, and service productivity. One of the questions posed by the case is the classic conundrum of where and how Magazine Luiza should expand while preserving its identity and culture. The case describes a large acquisition of another... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

March 2020
Case

Sizmek Chapter 11: Surviving Walled Gardens in Their Ad Tech Empire

By: Ayelet Israeli, Danilo Tauro and Sarah Gulick

This case provides a post-mortem of the advertising technology (adtech) company Sizmek. Sizmek grew via multiple acquisitions, with the vision of becoming an integrated adtech company that could leverage AI to buy digital media, while creating and serving display and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Competition; Marketing; Advertising Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; Europe

Web

Strategy - Doctoral

Rembrand M. Koning Josh Lerner Maria P. Roche Christopher T. Stanton Jo Tango Sara McKinley Torti Andy Wu Game theory Ramon Casadesus-Masanell Government & business Dennis A. Yao International business Juan Alcacer William R. Kerr Mergers... View Details

25 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

When Negotiating a Price, Never Bid with a Round Number

to be bargained down. The same holds true for salary negotiations. Hukkanen and Keloharju wanted to find out whether these social psychology findings held true in the financial market, focusing on mergers and View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Research Summary

Research

The founding and expansion of new firms is central to innovation and economic growth, but the determinants of a new idea’s success are difficult to ascertain. The decision to form a new firm and its ultimate outcome are impacted by ownership structure, financing... View Details

January 2025
Case

Redwood & Strong: The Value of a Consulting Engagement

By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti

The board of Redwood & Strong LLP (R&S), the American branch of a large global law firm, is meeting to review the findings of a recent strategic initiative designed to identify potential merger candidates. The request for the engagement originated from Daniel Crawford,... View Details

Keywords: Client Service; Professional Service Firm; Professional Services; Consulting; Mergers and Acquisitions; Governing and Advisory Boards; Reports; Strategic Planning; Value; Consulting Industry; Legal Services Industry; United States

February 2003 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Mobile Energy Services Company

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

When Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap became CEO of the Scott Paper Co., the company owned a large, vertically integrated production facility in Mobile, Alabama. Dunlap sold part of the production facility, a cogeneration power plant (later known as Mobile Energy Services Co.), to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Risk and Uncertainty; Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Investment; Projects; Vertical Integration; Energy Sources; Bonds; Ownership; Restructuring; Energy Industry; Alabama

Find at Harvard

Leemore Dafny is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration and the Howard Cox Health Care Initiative Faculty Co-Chair at the Harvard Business School. She also serves as Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dafny is an... View Details

Keywords: health care

January 1994
Article

Foreign Multinationals in British Manufacturing, 1850-1962

By: G. Jones and Frances Bostock

This article draws on a new database to describe the dimensions and characteristics of 685 foreign companies which established British manufacturing subsidiaries between 1850 and 1962. The numbers of foreign companies grew from the 1890s, expanded rapidly in the... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Business Subsidiaries; Expansion; Chemicals; Metals and Minerals; Food; Mergers and Acquisitions; Market Entry and Exit; Research and Development; Trade; Investment; Production; United Kingdom; United States; Scotland; Wales

Find at Harvard

October 2024
Case

Edizione

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery, Dante Roscini, Elena Corsi and Hugo Etchegoyhen

This case study examines the diversification and transformation of Edizione, the Benetton family's holding company originally established to reinvest dividends from the Benetton clothing brand. Edizione expanded significantly in the late 1990s and early 2000s,... View Details

June 2007 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Intel 2006: Rising to the Graphics Challenge

By: Willy C. Shih and Elie Ofek

Examines the evolution of the PC hardware industry over the span of two and a half decades. The open architecture design of the IBM Personal Computer followed by the rapid appearance of clones drove a high level of standardization and modularity in the industry, and... View Details

Keywords: History; Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Infrastructure; Competitive Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Technology Industry