Publications

SSRN

Read Now

Jo Tango is the MBA Class of 1962 Senior Lecturer of Business Administration. He helps teach "The Entrepreneurial Manager" (TEM), a required course for all 900 first-year students and of which he... View Details

27 May 2010
News

Sir Ronald Cohen Offers Class Day Advice to MBA Class of 2010

March 2022
Case

Metric

By: Christina Wallace, Rebecca Cink and Maria Lappas

Megan Murday, the founder of Metric, an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) analytics startup, must decide which customer segment to target as a beachhead market. She received positive feedback from a Swiss venture capital (VC) firm, indicating their... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Mission and Purpose; Customers

2009
Chapter

Evaluating the Impact of SA8000 Certification

By: Michael J. Hiscox, Claire Schwartz and Michael W. Toffel

SA 8000, along with other types of certification standards and corporate codes of conduct, represents a new form of private governance of working conditions, initiated and implemented by companies, labor unions, and non-governmental activist groups. Whether these codes... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Working Conditions; Standards; Performance Evaluation

Read Now

November 2012 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Talking Strategy at Greighton Partners

By: Boris Groysberg and Kerry Herman

Since its inception, London-based private equity firm Greighton Partners had managed over $15 billion in investor capital. The firm employed about 150 professionals around the globe and had completed over 175 company acquisitions since its founding. Started with a... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Asia; Europe

June 2014 (Revised May 2020)
Supplement

Busse Place (B): Hannah's Dilemma

By: Arthur I. Segel and John H. Vogel, Jr.

Marisa Sanchez, a new Associate at Douglas Private Equity Advisors, confronts a dilemma when she is asked by a Senior Vice President (SVP) to do due diligence on a deal he wants to bring before the investment committee which will include the SVP, Douglas' owner and... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Financial Analysis; Property; Finance; Analysis; Ethics; Real Estate Industry; United States

March 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Eliot Spitzer: Pushing Wall Street to Reform

By: Rawi Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella and Jonathan Schlefer

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer faced a decision about how to stop wrongdoing committed by major Wall Street firms during the Internet boom. The equities analysts of Merrill Lynch and other Wall Street firms were charged with objectively advising retail... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decisions; Financial Institutions; Stocks; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Laws and Statutes; Lawsuits and Litigation; Conflict of Interests; Internet; Financial Services Industry; United States

In January 2012, H-E-B Grocery Co., a private retail chain with stores located in Texas and Mexico, was introducing its Healthy at H-E-B program to its customers. The program, which started with the company's employees a few years earlier, was an effort to... View Details

2018
Chapter

Between Economic Planning and Market Competition: International Law and Economics in the U.S.

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The impact of institutional economics in shaping the American regulatory tradition has largely been dismissed as an incoherent attack on the neoclassical economic paradigm. This essay briefly reconstructs the interwar institutionalist movement, exploring the... View Details

Keywords: Economics; History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; United States

Find at Harvard

November 2008 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Teena Lerner: Dividing the Pie at Rx Capital (Abridged)

By: Boris Groysberg, Victoria Winston and Robin Abrahams

Teena Lerner, the CEO of Rx Capital, had a problem. Her three-year-old hedge fund was highly profitable, but in 2004, one of her four equities analysts lost a lot of money for the firm. If Lerner followed her existing compensation system, designed to reward teamwork,... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Performance Evaluation; Groups and Teams; Financial Services Industry

June 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Creating World-Class Board Governance at SECO

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Emer Moloney

In Spring 2023, SECO CEO Massimo Mauri had the ambition to grow the €200 million revenue technology company to a €1 billion company by 2030. Founded in Italy in the 1970s, the family-owned company had gone through a period of growth and internationalization,... View Details

20 Jul 2017
News

The Looming Threat That Could Decimate Wall Street's Fund Managers

20 Aug 2012
News

The right number of stars for a team

December 2009 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Lyondell Chemical Company

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah Abbott

Hit with an industry recession and the global financial crisis of 2008, in January 2009 LyondellBasell Industries AF S.C.A., one of the world's largest internationally diversified chemical companies headquartered in The Netherlands, placed its U.S. operations and a... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Capital Structure; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financing and Loans; International Finance; Crisis Management; Chemical Industry; Netherlands; United States

Fourth Quarter 2017
Article

Optimal Tilts: Combining Persistent Characteristic Portfolios

By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Terry Burnham

We examine the optimal weighting of four tilts in U.S. equity markets from 1968 through 2014. We define a “tilt” as a characteristic-based portfolio strategy that requires relatively low annual turnover. This is a continuum, with small size (a very persistent... View Details

Keywords: Risk Anomaly; Beta; Capital Asset Pricing Model; Factor Investing

14 Apr 2022
News

China Hesitates on Bailing Out Sri Lanka, Pakistan as Debt Soars

May 2017
Case

Buffer.com

By: Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall and Jee Eun Shin

Social media company Buffer wanted to establish clear company values early in its growth. One of these values was a commitment to transparency in its company practices. Buffer openly shared its business strategies and fundraising decks, among lots of other information.... View Details

Keywords: Compensation; Compensation Design; Company Values; Culture; Transparency; Compensation and Benefits; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs

November 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Darby's Investment in Sirma: Professionalizing an Entrepreneurial Firm

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Eren Kuzucu

In March 2010, Burak Dalgın (HBS MBA 2004) led private equity firm Darby's investment in Sırma, a local Turkish water and beverage company. Sırma was owned and managed by members of two Turkish business families. The existing management, while being highly... View Details

Keywords: Control Systems; Variance Analysis; Emerging Markets; Debt; Family Ownership; Turkey; Valuation; Business or Company Management; Private Equity; Financial Reporting; Investment; Budgets and Budgeting; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey