Publications

July 2018
Case

Financing Anghami's Growth

By: Ramana Nanda and Eren Kuzucu

In December 2012, less than two years into the founding of their music-streaming platform Anghami, cofounders Elie Habib and Eddy Maroun found themselves evaluating an unorthodox term sheet. Habib and Maroun needed to make a decision vis-à-vis the proposal put forth by... View Details

Research Summary

Tax Factors in Business Decisions

Henry B. Reiling is continuing a field-based project that explores the human, business, tax, and finance problems encountered in transferring the ownership and management of a family business to the next generation.

View Details

Teaching Interest

Executive Education: Finance for Senior Executives

By: Malcolm P. Baker

Finance for Senior Executives provides the frameworks to strategically use financial resources and position your company for future success. By examining corporate finance from both internal and external perspectives, this HBS Executive Education View Details

January 2006
Tutorial

Alternative Choice Decisions Analysis

By: David F. Hawkins, V.G. Narayanan, Jacob Cohen and Michele Jurgens

Shows how managers use information on costs and revenues to decide between possible alternative courses of action. Presents two case examples of differential cost analysis. The first, a make or buy decision, examines two alternatives in which only costs vary. The... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Profit; Revenue; Information; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Problems and Challenges; Conflict and Resolution

January 2025
Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa’s Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details

Web

Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

clever decision given the capital market’s apparent failure to appreciate the associated risks. Begenau and Stafford suggest and provide evidence for an additional consideration: that high leverage signals an excessive focus on View Details

Article

How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions

By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev

For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making

Register to Read

May 2004 (Revised May 2006)
Case

AsiaInfo: The IPO Decision

The cofounder and CEO of AsiaInfo, a Chinese system integrator that built 70% of China's Internet backbone, must decide whether to list equity in the United States to fund future growth. Describes the company and the decision. A rewritten version of a previous case. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Initial Public Offering; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Equity; Information Technology Industry; China; United States

April 2011
Teaching Note

Santander Consumer Finance (TN)

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull

Teaching Note for 711015. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Expansion; Decisions; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Credit; Growth and Development; Personal Finance; Management Practices and Processes; Banking Industry; Spain

July – August 2009
Article

The Descent of Finance

What if the current recession turns out to be like the Great Depression of 1929-1933? Four years from now, the United States might find itself with a still-shrinking economy, half as many banks as in 2009, a third as many hedge funds, and retail banking resembling a... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; International Finance; Globalized Economies and Regions; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry

November 2002 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Circles: Series D Financing

By: Paul W. Marshall and Kristin Lieb

Circles, a corporate concierge company on the verge of profitability, must make a decision whether to take a D-round venture capital despite ever-changing and ever-worsening terms. A four-year-old company with several major clients, it has met its business plan... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Financing and Loans; Management Teams; Growth and Development Strategy; Negotiation Process; Venture Capital; Governing and Advisory Boards; Entrepreneurship; Service Industry; Consulting Industry; Massachusetts

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

economics," says Shawn A. Cole, an associate professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School. "A frequent criticism of bankers in the recent crisis is that they took a lot of incentive pay in the years leading up to the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

February 1991
Case

Burlington Northern: The ARES Decision (A)

By: Julie H. Hertenstein and Robert S. Kaplan

Burlington Northern's decision whether to invest in ARES, an automated train control system, is a ($350 million) strategic investment in information technology. Although set in a service industry (railroad) the issues around this decision arise in many organizations... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Rail Transportation; Information Technology; Competitive Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Performance Effectiveness; Cost vs Benefits; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Customers; Quality; Rail Industry

April 2005 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Pegasus Capital: The Musimundo Decision

By: Michael Chu and Barbara Zepp Larson

The five managing directors of Pegasus Capital were meeting in June 2003 to make a go/no-go decision regarding the investment of Musimundo, one of the largest entertainment retailers in Argentina. Just four days before the planned closing of the sale, Pegasus' 50%... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Debates; Decision Choices and Conditions; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Financial Crisis; Music Entertainment; Investment; Business or Company Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Opportunities; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Argentina

2012
Article

A Reduced-Form Approach to Behavioral Public Finance

By: Sendhil Mullainathan, Joshua Schwartzstein and William Congdon

Research in behavioral public finance has blossomed in recent years, producing diverse empirical and theoretical insights. This article develops a single framework with which to understand these advances. Rather than drawing out the consequences of specific... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Social Insurance; Externalities; Taxation; Finance; Public Sector

Read Now

26 Oct 2018
Blog Post

Making the Switch from Finance to Fitness

“Fitness is your hobby. Finance is your career.” - Words so false that they changed my life. Finance After graduating from Yale University, I joined the fast-paced world of Foreign Exchange (FX) at a large... View Details

Article

Dividend Decisions and Earnings

By: Paul M. Healy and Franco Modigliani

Keywords: Stocks; Finance

June 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

The Euro-Dollar Decision (A)

By: Huw Pill, John C. Kelleher, Michael T. Nally and David Schlendorf

Explores the factors that determine floating exchange rates in the context of the introduction of the euro in January 1999. View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; European Union