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- Faculty Publications (64)
Scandal
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- April 2013
- Teaching Plan
Barclays and the LIBOR Scandal
By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia
In the summer of 2012, Barclays plc, one of the largest banks in the world, agreed to settle with authorities and acknowledged that the firm had manipulated LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate)—a benchmark reference rate that was fundamental to the operation of... View Details
- March 2013
- Case
NovaStar Financial: A Short Seller's Battle
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Amy Kaser
The NovaStar case describes the challenges faced by short seller Marc Cohodes of hedge fund Rocker Partners as he tried to expose what he thought was widespread fraud in mortgage lender NovaStar Financial. The case is set in the time period from 2001 to 2007 and tracks... View Details
Keywords: Short Selling; Financial Accounting; Financial Analysis; Financial Analysts; Valuation; Business Analysis; Financial Statement Analysis; Financial Statements; Securitization; Securities Analysis; Fraud; Accounting Quality; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Restatements; Hedge Fund; Hedge Funds; Accounting Scandal; Accounting Fraud; Financial Crisis; Financial Intermediaries; Financial Firms; Corporate Accountability; Subprime Lending; Mortgage Lending; Accounting; Accrual Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Governance; Governance Compliance; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Financial Services Industry; United States; California
- February 2013
- Case
Diamond Foods, Inc.
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Tim Gray
The Diamonds Foods, Inc. case describes the major accounting blow up at the company in late 2011 that was triggered by a report by Off Wall Street, a prominent short selling research firm. Diamond Foods, a high flying growth company in 2011, grew from a walnut farmers'... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Restatements; Accounting Scandal; Accounting; Financial Analysis; Financial Statement Analysis; Short Selling; Revenue Recognition; Board Of Directors; Audit Committees; Auditing; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Agribusiness; Accrual Accounting; Earnings Management; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Revenue; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; California; Cambridge
- January 2013 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
First Solar: CFRA's Accounting Quality Concerns
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Ian McKown Cornell
The case relates to accounting quality analysis conducted by the leading research firm Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) on companies in the solar industry with a focus on First Solar Inc. In 2009, CFRA was concerned that First Solar, like much of the... View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Accounting Quality; Financial Accounting; Financial Statement Analysis; Accounting Fraud; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Scandal; Risk and Uncertainty; Quality; Earnings Management; Valuation; Crime and Corruption; Financial Statements; Energy Sources; Green Technology Industry; Accounting Industry; Energy Industry
- January 2013 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
Barclays and the LIBOR Scandal
By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia
In June of 2012, Barclays plc admitted that it had manipulated LIBOR—a benchmark interest rate that was fundamental to the operation of international financial markets and that was the basis for trillions of dollars of financial transactions. Between 2005 and 2009... View Details
- December 2012
- Case
Trouble Brewing for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Michael Norris
In October 2011, noted hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital delivered a presentation at an investors' conference analyzing the business and accounting quality weaknesses of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Until then Green Mountain had exhibited rapid... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Fraud; Accounting Quality; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Restatements; Accounting Scandal; Accounting Information; Financial Accounting; Financial Analysts; Financial Analysis; Financial Intermediaries; Hedge Funds; Financial Ratios; Financial Statement Analysis; Valuation Methodologies; Earnings Quality; Accounting; Quality; Earnings Management; Valuation; Crime and Corruption; Mergers and Acquisitions; Financial Reporting; Investment Funds; Financial Statements; Food and Beverage Industry
- October 2012 (Revised July 2013)
- Case
Olympus (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Suraj Srinivasan and Kathleen Durante
As 2012 approached, the woes of the financial crisis seemed to be fading, companies were resuming business as usual, and some of the scrutiny on corporate governance practices began to recede as well. That is until another major financial scandal emerged in Japan in... View Details
- October 2012
- Supplement
Olympus (B)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Suraj Srinivasan and Kathleen Durante
This case outlines Michael Woodford's awards and honors, after having been fired from Olympus in October 2011. It discusses the repercussions following an investigation into the fraud and the report that was released thereafter. It also discusses the lawsuit that... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Can Implicit Regulation Change Financial Market Behavior? Evidence from Spitzer's Attack on Market Timers
This paper explores a natural experiment setup from the 2003-2004 mutual fund scandals to evaluate the effectiveness of implicit regulation on financial markets behavior. On average, buy-and-hold investors lost 218 basis points annually from 1998 to 2002 to market... View Details
- October 2011
- Article
Government Advertising and Media Coverage of Corruption Scandals
By: Rafael Di Tella and Ignacio Franceschelli
We construct measures of the extent to which the four main newspapers in Argentina report government corruption in their front page during the period 1998-2007 and correlate them with government advertising. The correlation is negative. The size is considerable: a one... View Details
- October 2010 (Revised October 2011)
- Case
Ken Langone: Member, GE Compensation Committee
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Lizzie Gomez
On September 2003, Richard Grasso stepped down as chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, following weeks of intense public criticism over the size of his $190 million compensation package. As chairman of the committee that oversaw Grasso's payout, Ken Langone... View Details
- September 8, 2009
- Article
The New Governance Paradigm
By: Nathaniel Foote and Michael Beer
Boards members of failed banks in 2008 or of the many companies like Enron who were caught up in scandals are by and large honorable, well intentioned, and competent people. So what went wrong and what can be done about it. This article argues that the problem lies in... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
Adelphia Communications Corp.'s Bankruptcy
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Belen Villalonga
In 2002, a massive accounting fraud and corporate looting scandal involving the founding Rigas family made Adelphia the 11th largest bankruptcy case in history, and the third-after WorldCom and Enron-among those triggered by fraud. Set in 2005, when Adelphia is... View Details
- April 2007 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Dr. Iqbal Survé at Sekunjalo Investment Group (A)
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker
Dr. Iqbal Surve, a self-described "medical doctor, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur," was born in 1963 and grew up in poverty, like virtually all non-white South Africans during apartheid. During the 1970s and 1980s, he served in leadership positions in the ANC,... View Details
- Working Paper
Benchmarking Against the Performance of High Profile 'Scandal' Firms
By: Emre Karaoglu, Tatiana Sandino and Randy Beatty
In recent years, several high profile firms engaged in accounting fraud that resulted in severe investor losses and erosion of trust in the capital markets. We examine high profile accounting "scandals" prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unlike most... View Details
- October 2004 (Revised March 2006)
- Background Note
Learning from Scandals: Responsibility of Professional Organizations
By: Ashish Nanda
This case comments on the responsibility of professional organizations to respond openly to public accusations of wrongdoing by its members. It briefly relates the circumstances of the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church and the... View Details
- January 2004 (Revised April 2004)
- Case
Crisis and Response: Sexual Abuse Allegations in the Boston Archdiocese (B)
By: Ashish Nanda
In 2002, the Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church was confronted by public revelations of how allegations of clergy sexual abuse were handled by the archdiocese during the 1990s. This case describes how the Boston archdiocese addressed the issue over the... View Details
- January 2003 (Revised February 2004)
- Case
The Credit Suisse Group
By: Ashish Nanda and Kelley Elizabeth Morrell
On September 19, 2002, Lukas Muhlemann announced that he would step down as chairman and CEO of the Credit Suisse Group, effective January 1, 2003. The bank had progressed from a small Swiss start-up 150 years ago to a global banking powerhouse. Over the past 5 years,... View Details
- January 2002
- Case
Price-Fixing Vignettes
By: Guhan Subramanian and Michelle Kalka
This case escribes the antitrust prosecutions in the United States and abroad of the international bulk vitamins cartel. Both the civil and criminal fines were historically high, and it was the first time the United States prosecuted foreign nationals for U.S. criminal... View Details
- April 1999 (Revised August 2004)
- Case
Tarnished Rings? Olympic Games Sponsorship Issues
By: John A. Clendenin and Stephen A. Greyser
Focuses on the impacts for Olympic sponsor companies of the bribery allegations related to the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The spread of the scandal to the International Olympic Committee board members and the recent... View Details