Publications

30 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID Not Slowing VC Investment

expect their investments to outperform major equity indexes going forward, and they’re continuing to fund new endeavors. “It’s sort of the opposite of doom and gloom,” Gompers says. “We were surprised by how relatively unaffected the... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Financial Services; Banking

01 Aug 2019
News

Investing for Good

arrangement to deliver social value and financial value. “The social impact bond allows government to transfer the risk of performance of particular social programs to the investors. So in the event of a project's success, the government... View Details

Keywords: Finance

Teaching Interest

Strategies for Value Creation (MBA Course)

By: Benjamin C. Esty

SVC is a capstone course that integrates topics from finance, strategy, and leadership. It is intentionally cross-functional and designed to force integration at the end of the MBA program. Students develop a value creation mindset and learn that value creation is an... View Details

June 2018 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Valuing Snap After the IPO Quiet Period (A)

By: Marco Di Maggio, Benjamin C. Esty and Gregory Saldutte

Snap, the disappearing message app, went public at $17 per share on March 2, 2017, making its two 20-something founders the youngest self-made billionaires in the country. Over the next three weeks, 14 analysts made investment recommendations on Snap: two with buy... View Details

07 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

01 Oct 1998
News

A Community Investment

Scoon: While social enterprises are different in many profound ways in terms of mission and style, to run effectively they rely on many of the analytical skills with which we are familiar. Clearly, the School and its graduates can add View Details

October 1994
Case

Bankers Trust: Global Investment Bank

By: Andre F. Perold and Kuljot Singh

In October 1992, Eugene Shanks, president of Bankers Trust New York Corp., and Brian Walsh, head of the Global Investment Bank (GIB) business unit, are considering a proposal for a large and complex financing involving the North Sea Oil Co. (NSOC). The financing... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Risk Management; Value Creation; Business History; Capital Markets; Financing and Loans; Financial Markets; Corporate Finance; Banking Industry; Energy Industry

2017
Working Paper

Investment Timing with Costly Search for Financing

By: Samuel Antill

I develop a dynamic model of investment timing in which firms must first choose when to search for external financing. Search is costly and the arrival of investors is uncertain, leading to delay in financing and investment. Depending on parameters, my model can... View Details

Keywords: Real Options; Search And Bargaining; Time-varying Financial Conditions; Investment; Venture Capital; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

February 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

The Children's Investment Fund, 2005

By: Randolph B. Cohen and Joshua B. Sandbulte

TCI, The Children's Investment Fund, is a London-based hedge fund. The firm donates a significant fraction of the fees it earns to a charitable foundation. In 2005, TCI took a large stake in Deutsche Borse, the stock exchange in Frankfurt. Its battle with management... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Financial Markets; Investment Activism; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Financial Services Industry; London; Germany

February 1991 (Revised November 1993)
Supplement

Investment Analysis and Lockheed Tri Star

A set of five exercises in capital budgeting. Student calculates and compares various decision criteria (including IRR and NPV) for capital investment projects. This is an introductory case, where relevant cash flows are provided, and the focus is on the discounting... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Manufacturing Industry; Air Transportation Industry

Article

Optimal Value and Growth Tilts in Long-Horizon Portfolios

By: Jakub W. Jurek and Luis M. Viceira

We develop an analytical solution to the dynamic portfolio choice problem of an investor with power utility defined over wealth at a finite horizon, who faces a time-varying investment opportunity set, parameterized using a flexible vector autoregression. We apply this... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Asset Pricing; Value

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Article

Survive Another Day: Using Changes in the Composition of Investments to Measure the Cost of Credit Constraints

By: Luis Garicano and Claudia Steinwender

We introduce a novel empirical strategy to measure the size of credit shocks. Theoretically, we show that credit shocks reduce the value of long-term relative to short-term investments. Empirically, we can therefore compare the reduction of long-term relative to... View Details

Keywords: Credit Constraints; Credit Crunch; Spain; Investment Behavior; Credit Squeeze; Financial Crisis; Economic Growth; Investment; Credit; Manufacturing Industry; Spain; European Union

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08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

27 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Corporate Values and Employee Cynicism

about leaders when leaders do four things: (i) Explicitly acknowledge the tension among multiple aims. Sometimes values bump up against one another—consider the cases in which leaders need to manage tradeoffs between maximizing profits... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 2018 (Revised April 2021)
Supplement

Valuing Snap After the IPO Quiet Period

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Marco Di Maggio and Greg Saldutte

2024
Working Paper

Valuing Stocks With Earnings

By: Sebastian Hillenbrand and Odhrain McCarthy

We show that commonly used aggregate earnings are several times as volatile as stock prices over the last three decades. Movements in the price-earnings ratio are thus entirely explained by earnings growth and unrelated to future returns. As an alternative to the... View Details

Keywords: Price; Investment Portfolio; Stocks; Behavioral Finance; Accounting

SSRN

July 2013 (Revised October 2014)
Case

Value Retail: Opportunities for European Expansion

By: Arthur I Segel

Scott Malkin, CEO of Value Retail, a developer and operator of European outlet villages serving luxury brands, is planning on developing a 18,503 m2 open-air outlet village to be built 98 kilometers south of Milan on land he was about to acquire for 7.26 million lira.... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Investment; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; Retail Industry; Milan

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details