Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(627)
- Faculty Publications (126)
- August 2010 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
Paradise Travel Advisory Service
By: Paul W. Marshall, Charles Anthony Miller and Collins Pettus Ward
New managers in a troubled company are faced with developing and implementing a plan to increase revenue in a travel service business. View Details
- April 2010
- Article
Executive Pay and 'Independent' Compensation Consultants
By: K. J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
Executive compensation consultants face potential conflicts of interest that can lead to higher recommended levels of CEO pay, including the desires to "cross-sell" services and to secure "repeat business." We find evidence in both the US and Canada that CEO pay is... View Details
- October 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture
By: Frances X. Frei, Robin J. Ely and Laura Winig
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its board of directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- July 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
RiskMetrics Group
By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kaitlyn Simpson
RiskMetrics Group, a risk and governance consultancy, had a great deal of influence on U.S. companies. This case examines the history and growth of the company, the governance services it offers, the extent of its impact on shareholders, the controversy surrounding its... View Details
- June 2009 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Target Corporation: Ackman versus the Board
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan and James Weber
After 15 years of great performance, Target's faltering performance during an economic downturn led an activist shareholder to initiate a proxy fight. Target Corporation, the second largest discount store retailer in the U.S., had competed successfully against industry... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Case
Relational Investors and Home Depot (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kaitlyn Simpson
In 2006, amidst shareholder upset over CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation and Home Depot's declining stock price, Relational Investors decided to further investigate the situation. As experts in turning around underperforming and undervalued companies, Relational's... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A1)
By: Fabrizio Ferri, V.G. Narayanan and James Weber
Two activist investors, one a founder and one a hedge fund manager, seek to improve board oversight at a chain restaurant company. Prestley Blake founded Friendly Ice Cream in 1935 with his brother, and the two created a chain of full-service restaurants. In 1979, they... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Supplement
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A2)
By: V.G. Narayanan, Fabrizio Ferri and James Weber
The A1 and A2 versions of the “Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A)” split the original A case into two parts. The A1 case ends as activists Sardar Biglari and Phil Cooley prepare to meet with CEO Don Smith at Friendly's headquarters in September 2006. The... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
CEO and CFO Career Penalties to Missing Quarterly Analysts Forecasts
By: Rick Mergenthaler, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We find that missing the quarterly analyst consensus earnings forecast is associated with career penalties in the form of a reduced bonus, smaller equity grants, and a greater chance of forced dismissal for both CEOs and CFOs during the period 1993-2004. These results... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A)
By: Fabrizio Ferri, V.G. Narayanan and James Weber
Two activist investors, one a founder and one a hedge-fund manager, seek to improve board oversight at a chain restaurant company. Prestley Blake founded Friendly Ice Cream in 1935 with his brother, and the two created a chain of full-service restaurants. In 1979 they... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Structural Closure and Exposure: Market Reactions to Announcements of Acquisitions and Divestitures
By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Nitin Nohria
This paper develops an exchange-network perspective on corporate diversification and proposes two measures of corporate scope: structural closure and structural exposure. Structural closure focuses on exchanges of goods and services inside the firm... 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
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy
This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details
- December 2007 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
The American National Red Cross (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Eliot Sherman and David Chen
Describes the governance issues facing the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross. After a series of issues--FDA consent decree on its blood operations; the response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina--the Red Cross board was under pressure to fix its governance from... View Details
- September 2007 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
ValueAct: Shareholder in the Boardroom
By: Jay W. Lorsch and Alexis Chernak
ValueAct, a San Francisco investment firm, makes an investment in PerSe Technologies. The partners of ValueAct build relationships with the PerSe board and management. Eventually ValueAct is given a seat on the PerSe board and is able to influence a significant imprint... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing
By: Fabrizio Ferri and Tatiana Sandino
In this paper we examine the economic consequences of over 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004–the first case where the SEC has allowed an accounting matter to be subject to an advisory... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Case
The Vanguard Group, Inc. in 2006 and Target Retirement Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira
The Vanguard Group is one of the largest asset managers in the U.S., with over $1 trillion in assets, ninety percent of which are mutual fund assets, and more than 12,000 employees at year-end 2006. Vanguard has built a strong reputation as the manager of reference for... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised April 2008)
- Case
Say on Pay
By: Jay W. Lorsch, V.G. Narayanan and Alexis Chernak
Briefly describes the trend in 2006 and 2007 in the United States to give shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation. Highlights a few examples where shareholders have successfully garnered a majority in support of an advisory vote measure on company proxy... View Details
- April 2007
- Case
ABN AMRO Bank N.V.: Global Change Agents
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Lance P. Pierce and Ryan Leo Raffaelli
ABN AMRO Global Banking Group developed its risk management function in response to expansion, and increasingly focused on environmental and social risks. The head of the function needed to influence policies and business decisions in a highly decentralized context in... View Details
- February 2007
- Case
Behavioral Finance at JP Morgan
By: Malcolm P. Baker and Aldo Sesia
Following a successful model in Europe, JP Morgan has introduced a set of five U.S. retail mutual funds with an investment philosophy and marketing strategy grounded in behavioral finance. The asset management group believes that understanding investor biases like... View Details