Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,093)
- Faculty Publications (525)
- July 2022 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
3G Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In June 2022, 3G Capital Co-Managing Partners Alex Behring and Daniel Schwartz were in a partners’ meeting. On the agenda were three potential investments. Code named “Alpha,” “Bravo,” and “Charlie” (real target companies that have been disguised), they were the... View Details
- July 2022
- Article
Private Equity and COVID-19
By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov
We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decisionmaking and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to... View Details
- June 2022
- Case
PFA Pensions: The Climate Plus Product
By: Daniel Green, Victoria Ivashina and Alys Ferragamo
The case explores whether alternative investments play a unique role in achieving low carbon dioxide emissions at the portfolio level. This case is set in April of 2020 and follows Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, Chief Investment Officer, and Peter Tind Larsen, Head of... View Details
- May 2022 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is?
By: Robin Greenwood, James Williams and Denise Han
In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details
- May 2022
- Supplement
Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is? (B)
By: Robin Greenwood and Denise Han
In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation
Philanthropist Clara Wu Tsai is committed to racial equity and investing in Brooklyn-based minority business owners. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, she decides to create a new initiative called the Social Justice Fund and commit an initial $50 million over 10... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Aldrich Capital Partners
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
By July 2016, the Aldrich Capital Partners team had spent over two years trying to raise their inaugural growth-equity fund. They had pitched to over 140 investors, but none had committed. Managing Partners Mirza Baig and Raz Zia each had extensive experience in the... View Details
- Article
Expected Stock Returns Worldwide: A Log-Linear Present-Value Approach
By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew R. Lyle and Charles C.Y. Wang
This study provides the first large-scale study of the performance of expected-return proxies (ERPs) internationally. Analyst-forecast-based ICCs are sparsely populated and not robustly associated with future returns. Earnings-model-forecast-based ICCs are... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects
By: Falk Bräuning, Victoria Ivashina and Ali Ozdagli
High-yield debt including leveraged loans is characterized by incurrence financial covenants, or “cov-lite” provisions. A traditional loan agreement includes maintenance covenants, which require continuous compliance with the covenant threshold, and their violation... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Pushing Past the Boundaries of ESG Investing: AQR Capital Management
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Richard B. Evans, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen
Cliff Asness was facing a dilemma into how he would plunge his hedge fund into the hottest investment area worldwide—ESG Investing. Founder and managing principal of AQR—one the most storied quantitative hedge funds in the world—Asness knew anything less than a big... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
MicroStrategy's Investment in Bitcoin
By: C. Fritz Foley
At the end of the second quarter of 2020, MicroStrategy, a Virginia based provider of analytics software and services, announced plans to acquire and hold bitcoin as a part of the firm’s treasury reserve policy and corporate strategy. Within a year, the firm purchased... View Details
- January 2022
- Background Note
The Florange Law: Encouraging Long-Termism in Equity Markets?
By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Tonia Labruyere
This note provides background information on a French law (“the Florange law”) passed in 2014 that the French government said would encourage long-term shareholdings. The note describes the law, what led to it, the reactions it evoked, and similar initiatives in other... View Details
- January 2022
- Article
Investing Outside the Box: Evidence from Alternative Vehicles in Private Equity
By: Josh Lerner, Jason Mao, Antoinette Schoar and Nan R. Zhang
This paper uses previously unexplored custodial data to examine the use of alternative investment vehicles in private equity (PE) over four decades. We document a steep increase in the capital directed to alternative vehicles, with these vehicles approaching a 40%... View Details
- January 2022
- Article
Pushed into a Crowd: Repositioning Costs, Resources, and Competition in the RTE Cereal Industry
By: Young Hou and Dennis Yao
This paper exploits a natural experiment involving self-regulation in the ready-to-eat (RTE) breakfast cereal industry to evaluate the performance impact of product repositioning. It then examines how a product's brand equity value declines with repositioning distance... View Details
- January 2022
- Article
Replicating Private Equity with Value Investing, Homemade Leverage, and Hold-to-Maturity Accounting
By: Erik Stafford
The contributions of asset selection and incremental leverage to buyout investment performance are more important than typically assumed or estimated to be. Buyout funds select small firms with distinct value characteristics. Public equities with these characteristics... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Stock Investors' Returns Are Exaggerated
By: Jesse M. Fried, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang
The stock market generates less wealth than it appears. We show that total shareholder return (TSR), the standard measure of stock investor performance, substantially exaggerates returns earned by these investors in aggregate, and thus by most investors. The main... View Details
- December 2021
- Case
Grace Capital
By: Sara Fleiss, Robin Greenwood, Eren Kuzucu and Denise Han
In March 2020, the global pandemic was delivering a dose of volatility to the U.S. economy. Catherine Faddis, the CIO of Grace Capital, a Boston-based long-only equity manager, analyzed movements in her portfolio while eyeing previously shelved opportunities to invest... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin
In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details
- October 2021
- Case
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for... View Details
- October 2021
- Supplement
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for... View Details