Publications

08 Dec 2022
HBS Case

The War in Ukraine and Nestlé’s Moral Dilemma: Stay or Leave Russia?

plants, laying off employees, and selling assets and real estate. Ultimately, Nestlé chose a middle ground. The company announced on March 23 it would halt the “vast majority” of its sales, including nonessential items such as chocolate,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

December 2022
Case

LIV Golf

By: Alexander J. MacKay

On March 17, 2022, Greg Norman, CEO of LIV Golf, announced the 8-tournament schedule for the inaugural season of the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Norman, a retired professional golfer and former world #1, was helming the league to compete with the PGA Tour, which was... View Details

Keywords: Anti-trust; Golf; ＂Sports Organizations,; Sports Management; Competition; Competition Policy; Strategy; Strategy And Leadership; Competitive Strategy; Sports; Sports Industry

May 2020 (Revised June 2020)
Case

TransDigm's Acquisition and Integration of Arkwin Industries

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher

In May 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and civilian aircraft, announced it was buying Arkwin Industries for $286 million in cash (3 times Arkwin’s sales of $91 million). Having acquired... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Value Creation; Strategy; Acquisition; Integration; Talent and Talent Management; Aerospace Industry

June 2012
Article

Decoding Inside Information

By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy and Lukasz Pomorski

Using a simple empirical strategy, we decode the information in insider trading. Exploiting the fact that insiders trade for a variety of reasons, we show that there is predictable, identifiable "routine" insider trading that is not informative for the future of firms.... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Financial Markets; Forecasting and Prediction; Law Enforcement; Opportunities; Geographic Location; Business Earnings

SSRN

Find at Harvard

June 2010 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Vereinigung Hamburger Schiffsmakler und Schiffsagenten e.V. (VHSS): Valuing Ships

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Albert Sheen

After booming for more than five years, the global shipping (maritime) industry experienced a dramatic crash in late 2008 as the global financial system froze and the global economy slid into recession. Ship charter rates (revenue) fell by as much as 90% causing prices... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Financial Crisis; Capital Markets; Financial Liquidity; International Finance; Globalized Markets and Industries; Valuation; Banking Industry; Shipping Industry; Germany

October 1993 (Revised December 1997)
Case

General Dynamics: Compensation and Strategy (A)

William Anders became CEO of defense giant General Dynamics in 1991 as the Cold War was ending and as the industry became saddled with excess capacity. Observing that the company was underserving shareholders and required a massive change in its culture, Anders brought... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Corporate Strategy; Executive Compensation; Manufacturing Industry; United States

QuantCon NYC 2018 Quantitative Investing Confernece - Interview Video

Using the complete history of regular quarterly and annual filings by U.S. corporations from 1995-2014,... View Details

Web

Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

Stein & Adi Sunderam FEB 2017 | BFFS WP #010 Fed watching has become a routine business for bond market participants and the financial press. Monetary policy announcements are analyzed word by word for clues to the central bank's future... View Details

Research Summary

Selling your Heritage: The Challenge of Legacy Divestitures

This paper studies companies that diversify away from and later divest their historical cores, or "legacy" businesses. There are many reasons a firm might undertake this strategy, including a concentration of the legacy business in a declining... View Details

2022
Case

Polarizing Government Work: McKinsey & Co. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

When Donald Trump announced his run for president in 2015, he placed immigration front and center in his campaign. He promised to drastically expand U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and build a border... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Immigration; Public Opinion; Ethics

February 2023
Supplement

Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC... View Details

December 2017 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Tesla's Bid for SolarCity

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Raaj Zutshi

In October 2016, Tesla asked its shareholders to ratify their $2.4 billion bid for SolarCity. Tesla had announced a series of large projects in the preceding months including the unveiling of the Model 3, the new Solar Roof, and pushing forward the opening of the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business and Shareholder Relations; Project Finance

November 2012
Case

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. (Abridged)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Robert S. Huckman, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Matthew Preble

Considers whether New Balance, one of the world's five largest manufacturers of athletic footwear, should respond to Adidas' planned acquisition of Reebok—a transaction that would join the second- and third-largest companies in the industry. Highlights the unique... View Details

Keywords: Production; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Brands and Branding; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Retail Industry; Asia; United States

11 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 11, 2009

insiders strategically sell shares prior to the disclosure of goodwill impairment losses. We provide evidence that insiders of goodwill impairment firms engage in abnormal selling of their shares quarters prior to the announcement of such... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Could Clean Hydrogen Become Affordable at Scale by 2030?

Hydrogen is poised to move from the sidelines of global clean energy as the industry learns to produce it more efficiently and at lower cost, according to newly published research led by Gunther Glenk, a climate fellow with Harvard Business School's Institute for the... View Details

Keywords: by Desmond Dodd; Energy; Green Technology

13 Mar 2023
Op-Ed

How Leaders Should Leave

compete for advancement. With the career clock ticking, moving on may be the best option to grow. “No one likes a surprise exit, so don’t walk into the boss’s office, declare you’ve had enough, and announce you are leaving in two weeks... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

27 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Religion in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know

Once the case reached the US Supreme Court in 2015, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “This is really easy.” He announced the court was siding with Elauf 8 to 1, ruling that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it’s illegal to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage; Apparel & Accessories

2021
Case

Leading Through Challenging Times: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms

By: Michael Norris, Rawi Abdelal and Kimberlyn Leary

Keisha Lance Bottoms took office as Mayor of Atlanta in 2018 with a progressive agenda and hopes to “keep Atlanta moving forward, leaving no one behind.” She was an Atlanta native, had previously served as a local judge and city councilor, and came into office with... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; City; Problems and Challenges; Health Pandemics; Social Issues; Economy; Atlanta; United States

Read Now

September 2020
Case

Minerva 2010: Turbulent Times

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2010, amid a flurry of new discoveries, Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Corporation (Minerva), raised $6.6 million to test her new cancer drugs in mice. It had been more than 6 years since she had announced that she and her small team at... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Research; Product Development; Commercialization; Strategy