Publications

September 1994 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Hamilton Test Systems, Inc.

By: William A. Sahlman and Norman Klein

The protagonists must decide whether to invest in an auto emissions testing company as the first investment in the leveraged buyout fund they recently formed. Issues of how to raise the needed equity capital and how to structure the acquisition are emphasized. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Leveraged Buyouts; Environmental Sustainability; Investment; Service Industry; Auto Industry

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January 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Case

The Perfect Storm: What Happens When the Market Moves Four Standard Deviations?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz

Adam Carter was the portfolio manager for Tate Modern Finance III, L.P. (“Tate” or the “Fund”), the third in a series of U.S. commercial real estate debt funds sponsored by the London-based Tate Partners. The Fund was capitalized with $700 million of equity... View Details

Keywords: CMBS; CLO; Repo Financing; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans

October 2010 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Shenzhen Capital Group

By: Paul A. Gompers, Shaohui Chen, Jessie Lin and Shelley Ling

Haitao Jin, chairman of Shenzhen Capital Group Co., Ltd. (SCGC), and Wanshou Li, president of SCGC, must decide how to continue to grow their venture capital/private equity firm in China. SCGC is a premier VC/PE fund in China and a pioneer of the Government Sponsored... View Details

Keywords: Government And Business; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Investment Funds; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry; China

Career Coach

Madhav Datt

problem, validating with users, building an MVP; (2) big tech recruiting - Madhav conducted over 50 interviews for candidate at Google; and (3) navigating hedge fund recruiting - understanding what funds are... View Details

September 2008 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Strategy

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

By 2008, a number of the firm's early cleantech investments were showing promise, and the companies were starting to need significantly more money to create the massive scale required in the energy sector. As Khosla thought about the hundreds of millions of dollars... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Marketing; Entrepreneurial Finance; New Product Development; Partnerships; Entrepreneurial Management; Venture Capital; Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Renewable Energy; Entrepreneurship; Investment Funds; Environmental Sustainability; Product Development; Biotechnology Industry; Financial Services Industry

Career Coach

Jeffrey Noonan

Jeff enjoys helping students better understand the different stages of investing and pursue the stage that is right for them. Having considered post-MBA careers across VC, growth, PE, and public markets Jeff is well versed in the... View Details

January 2018
Supplement

Blue Harbour's Activism at Babcock & Wilcox (B)

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

Follow-up case detailing the changes and performance upswing at BWX Technologies after hedge fund Blue Harbour Group's investment and when the fund’s Managing Director Robb LeMasters (MBA’05) joined its board of directors. View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Energy Industry; Construction Industry; United States

20 Mar 2025
Blog Post

Scaling Climate Tech Innovation with Lee Scott (MBA 2023)

is your current role and what steps and tactics did you use to get hired in your current position? During EC year, I focused my career search on impact investing roles. I was particularly interested in impact-first View Details

January 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Opportunity Partners

By: Robin Greenwood and James Quinn

Philip Goldstein, the principal in a growing hedge fund and prominent activist investor, has taken a position in a Mexico-based closed-end fund. Following a hard-fought proxy contest in which he advocated for management to eliminate the fund's substantial discount,... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Business and Shareholder Relations; Value; Financial Services Industry; Mexico

July 2018
Teaching Note

The Perfect Storm: What Happens When the Market Moves Four Standard Deviations?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

Adam Carter was the portfolio manager for Tate Modern Finance III, L.P. (“Tate” or the “Fund”), the third in a series of U.S. commercial real estate debt funds sponsored by the London-based Tate Partners. The Fund was capitalized with $700 million of equity... View Details

Keywords: CMBS; CLO; Repo Financing; Real Estate; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans

2020
Article

Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance

By: Jonathan B. Berk, Jules van Binsbergen and Max Miller

The authors summarize the recent literature on mutual fund manager skill and performance. They discuss the latest contributions in the field and reinterpret them through the lens of the rational expectations framework (efficient market hypothesis). They further discuss... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Financial Management; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics

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26 Sep 2019
News

SoftBank Bet Big on Disruptive Companies. Many Have Not Paid Off.

19 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Inexperienced Investors and Market Bubbles

MacKay observed in 1852, "even chimney-sweeps and old clotheswomen dabbled in tulips." These days it's not just chimney-sweeps who are lured to investment heartbreak. New research suggests that even professional View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

January 2002 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Massachusetts Financial Services

By: Brian J. Hall and Jonathan Lim

This case describes the compensation and performance evaluations at an investment management company. The senior management team of Massachusetts Financial Services (MFS) Investment Management was contemplating an introduction of hedge funds at the firm, but many... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Management Teams; Compensation and Benefits; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts

2023
Working Paper

The Market for Sharing Interest Rate Risk: Quantities and Asset Prices

By: Ishita Sen, Umang Khetan, Jane Li and Ioana Neamtu

We study the extent of interest rate risk sharing across the financial system using granular positions and transactions data in interest rate swaps. We show that pension and insurance (PF&I) sector emerges as a natural counterparty to banks and corporations: overall,... View Details

Keywords: Interest Rates; Investment Funds; Banks and Banking; Insurance; Investment Banking; Risk and Uncertainty

SSRN

Read Now

John D. Dionne has been a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School since 2014 and is a recently retired Senior Managing Director and Senior Advisor to Blackstone. He is also Managing Partner of Franconia Capital, a... View Details

Fourth Quarter 2008
Article

Do Funds-of-Funds Deserve Their Extra Fees?

By: Andrew Ang, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Rui Zhao

Since the after-fee returns of funds-of-funds are, on average, lower than hedge fund returns, it is easy to conclude that funds-of-funds do not add value compared to hedge funds. However, funds-of-funds should not be evaluated relative to hedge fund returns in publicly... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Return; Value; Assets; Resource Allocation

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January 2019
Case

King Abdullah Economic City: Population Drivers and Cash Flow

By: John D. Macomber

CEO of high profile new economic city in Saudi Arabia must decide how to allocate limited investment funds across projects under duress. Issues include understanding core economic drivers; planning infrastructure investment and return; attracting multinationals; and... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Infrastructure; Project Finance; Resource Allocation; Decision Making; City; Real Estate Industry; Saudi Arabia