Publications

September 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Pershing Square 2.0

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel Hanson and David Biery

In June 2015 William A. Ackman, the CEO and founder of New York hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, reflects on the success of the fund he has spent over a decade building. Since its inception in 2004, Pershing Square's assets under management had grown from $500... View Details

Keywords: Activism; Value Investing; Portfolio Management; Management; Investment Portfolio; Investment Activism

March 1998 (Revised November 2004)
Case

FAG Kugelfischer-A German Restructuring

By: Stuart C. Gilson

A large German manufacturer of ball bearings and precision machinery experiences severe financial difficulty brought on by poor management practices, an ill-conceived acquisition of a former East German ball-bearings company, and an industry recession. The company... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Acquisition; Restructuring; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Machinery and Machining; Policy; Resignation and Termination; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Evaluation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Europe; Germany; United States

05 Feb 2007
News

Chimerical? Think Again

04 Mar 2020

Uncovering and Pricing Climate Risk in Long-Term Investments

April 2005 (Revised January 2007)
Case

Furman Selz LLC (A): A Tale of Two Acquisitions

By: Nancy D. Beaulieu, Boris Groysberg and Kyle Doherty

Profiles a firm that was reacquired by two companies with different degrees of success. Highlights integration challenges present in acquisition deals when the primary assets of the target are human capital. Focuses on Furman Selz's acquisition by Xerox in 1987; its... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Transition; Valuation; Human Capital; Compensation and Benefits; Integration; Organizational Culture; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

17 Sep 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Secrets of the Academy: The Drivers of University Endowment Success

Keywords: by Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar & Jialan Wang; Education

February 2018 (Revised August 2019)
Case

The Rise Fund: TPG Bets Big on Impact

By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Sarah Mehta

It is March 2017, and TPG, a global alternative investment firm with $74 billion assets under management, has recently launched its inaugural impact-investing fund—the $2 billion Rise Fund. In an effort to “take the religion out of impact investing,” Maya Chorengel,... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Equity; Investment; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Services Industry; California; San Francisco

07 Apr 2020
Video

Uncovering and Pricing Climate Risk in Long-Term Investments

12 Apr 2015
News

Actively managed exchange traded funds are the NextShares big thing

Working Paper

Diversification as an Adaptive Learning Process: An Empirical Study of General-Purpose and Market-Specific Technological Know-How in New Market Entry

By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Gary P. Pisano

An enduring trait of modern corporations is their propensity to diversify into multiple lines of business. Penrosian theories conceptualize diversification as a strategy to exploit a firm’s fungible, yet “untradeable,” resources and point to redeployment of... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Diversification; Market Entry and Exit; Transformation

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March 2021
Case

Litigation Finance 2.0: LexShares

By: Lauren Cohen, Spencer C. N. Hagist and Yago Zavalia Gahan

Litigation finance—also referred to as third party litigation funding—was in its relative infancy as an asset class when Jay Greenberg and Max Volsky made a platform-play in the space. Seven years later, the market was far from "mainstream," but nonetheless had grown... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; United States

October 2009 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Merger of Equals: The Integration of Mellon Financial and The Bank of New York (A)

By: Ryan D. Taliaferro, Clayton S. Rose and David Lane

Less than a month after the close of the merger between The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, managers at the two firms realized that plans for combining their asset servicing businesses—and realizing the $180 million of annual cost savings that they had promised... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Asset Management; Financial Institutions; Risk Management; Integration; Information Technology; Financial Services Industry

22 Aug 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Investors as Stewards of the Commons?

Keywords: by George Serafeim

March 1994
Case

Fremont Financial Corporation (B)

Fremont has a third option to finance its loan portfolio, which involves securitizing and selling the small-business loans into the capital markets. Emphasizes asymmetric information and moral hazard problems involved in designing an asset securitization. When used in... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Financial Markets; Corporate Finance; Financial Services Industry

January 2025
Supplement

Food for Thought: Exiting Russia? (B)

By: Clayton S. Rose, Hugo Etchegoyhen and Lena Duchene

The (B) case examines the actions of Bonduelle and Danone as they responded to ongoing pressure to reevaluate their presence in Russia. While the (A) case explored the ethical and strategic dilemmas both companies faced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the (B) case... View Details

Keywords: Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; France; Russia

October 2020 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Divesting Harvard's Endowment

By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter

By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of... View Details

Keywords: Divestment; Harvard University; ESG; Higher Education; Investment Portfolio; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

September 2015
Article

Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors

By: Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein and Robert W. Vishny

We examine the business model of traditional commercial banks when they compete with shadow banks. While both types of intermediaries create safe "money-like" claims, they go about this in different ways. Traditional banks create money-like claims by holding illiquid... View Details

Keywords: Shadow Banking; Safe Money-like Claims; Commercial Banking