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Publications
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(2,739)
- Faculty Publications (611)
- May 1996
- Background Note
The GM's Operational Challenge: Managing Through People
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda
Highlights and explores how a general manager adds value to the firm at the operational level by managing through people. Discusses how assumptions about human motivation influence the employment contract that the general manager implicitly enters into with the workers... View Details
- May 1996
- Case
First Capital Holdings Corp.
By: Stuart C. Gilson, Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo
The manager of a money-management firm considers whether to invest in the securities of a large, financially troubled, California-based life insurance holding company that holds 40% of its assets in high-yield junk bonds. Over the past year, the value of its portfolio... View Details
- February 1996
- Case
USX Corporation
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott
A large diversified steel and energy firm is pressured by a corporate raider to spin off its steel business in order to increase its stock price. As an alternative to the spinoff, management proposes replacing the company's common stock with two new classes of... View Details
- Article
Investing in Distressed Situations: A Market Survey
By: S. C. Gilson
The risks of investing in distressed companies—a practice popularly known as "vulture" investing—are highly firm specific and idiosyncratic. Investors who are adept at managing these risks, who understand the legal rules that must be followed in corporate bankruptcy,... View Details
- March 1995
- Case
Donald Salter Communications, Inc.
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott
A new CEO is hired to manage the turnaround of a family-owned newspaper publisher. In a departure from previous management, he implements a new compensation scheme that explicitly ties executive pay to market-value-based measures of firm performance. Because the... View Details
- August 1994
- Case
Intuit, Inc.
The merger of two computer software firms with very rapidly growing non-overlapping products makes great strategic sense, but presents difficult valuation and accounting problems. How can a firm pay $225 million to acquire another firm with negligible current earnings,... View Details
- March 1994 (Revised February 2001)
- Background Note
Why Manage Risk?
By: Peter Tufano
Conventional finance theory demonstrates that, under simplistic assumptions, firms cannot add to shareholder value through the use of risk management activities. Modern finance theory has begun to carefully consider and examine those circumstances under which firms can... View Details
Keywords: Risk Management
- February 1994 (Revised February 1996)
- Case
Union Carbide Corporation: Interest Rate Risk Management
By: Peter Tufano
Union Carbide's board of directors is asked to evaluate a proposal from the staff treasurer's that would articulate policies to manage its debt portfolio. The staff proposes that shareholder value will be maximized if the firm manages its exposure to interest rates by... View Details
- February 1994
- Case
Kathryn McNeil (A)
Charles Foley, vice president of the computer retailing firm Sayer MicroWorld, must decide whether or not to fire his employee, Kathryn McNeil, a 37-year-old product manager who has been unable to work as many hours as her colleagues due to her status as a single... View Details
- February 1994 (Revised September 1995)
- Case
Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc.: Portfolio Insurance
By: Peter Tufano
Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, a small financial advisory firm founded in 1980, has created a successful business by selling a product commonly known as portfolio insurance. Portfolio insurance is a trading strategy that institutional investors use to establish... View Details
- January 1994 (Revised June 1994)
- Case
Dean Witter, Discover & Co.
By: Dwight B. Crane and W. James Whalen
Early in 1993, Sears was in the process of spinning off its Dean Witter, Discover subsidiary. This subsidiary consisted of a securities brokerage that was acquired in 1981 and also the Discover Card, a general purpose credit card, the firm introduced in 1985. The key... View Details
- January 1994 (Revised November 1997)
- Case
Aberlyn Capital Management: July 1993
By: Josh Lerner and Peter Tufano
Aberlyn Capital Management, a venture leasing firm specializing in providing capital to biotechnology firms, proposes to introduce a new product. Aberlyn will base a lease on an intangible product: the patent of a biotechnology firm. This poses a series of short and... View Details
- May 1993 (Revised June 2004)
- Case
PepsiCo Bottling in Mexico
By: Kenneth A. Froot
This case describes Pepsico's program to restructure its Mexican bottling network. It wants to work with existing bottlers and find an organizational arrangement that will allow the bottlers to grow and change with the Mexican soft drink industry. View Details
- February 1992 (Revised December 1994)
- Case
Birds Eye and the U.K. Frozen Food Industry (A)
By: David J. Collis
Describes the forty-year evolution of the U.K. frozen food industry, and traces the emergence, dominance, and the decline of Birds Eye. Its success is as a vertically integrated producer, distributor, and marketer of frozen foods that pioneers the industry in the U.K.... View Details
- March 1991 (Revised August 1994)
- Case
Berkshire Partners
Berkshire Partners is a limited partnership engaged in the acquisition of companies valued between $25 million and $250 million. The purpose of the case is to examine the resources of the firm and discuss the firm's competitive advantage vis-a-vis other types of... View Details
- February 1987 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Arley Merchandise Corporation
Involves the initial public offering of a firm's stock. The offering includes a money-back guarantee to investors from the issuing firm which comes in the form of a "put" option. Option valuation is thus an important issue in this case. View Details
- February 1985 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Health Stop (A): What Type of Innovation Is It? And Six Factors Alignment
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Joyce Lallman, Nancy Kane, Jefferson C. Grahling and James Wallace
How can we evaluate if innovative health care ventures can do good—benefit society—and do well—become financially viable? This question is the topic of the first module in the Innovating In Health Care course book.
This note and case series enables readers to conduct... View Details
- July 1982 (Revised December 1984)
- Case
Esmark, Inc. (A)
Involves the management of a firm with a market value of a going concern that is less than its breakup value. How does management maximize value for shareholders in this environment? View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Are Licensing Markets Local? An Analysis of the Geography of Vertical Licensing Agreements in Bio-Pharmaceuticals
By: Juan Alcacer, John Cantwell and Michelle Gittelman
As the value chain of the pharmaceutical industry disaggregates, upstream discovery is increasingly carried out by small research-specialized firms while downstream development, testing and marketing is conducted by global pharmaceutical firms. Licensing plays an... View Details
- Research Summary
Come Together: Firm Boundaries and Delegation
By: Laura Alfaro
We develop an incomplete-contracts model to jointly study firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within them. Integration has an option value: it gives firm owners authority to delegate or centralize decision rights, depending on who can best solve... View Details