Publications

July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A), The

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

The CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The highest priority is improving the terms of the financing with regard to costs and specific... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Joint Ventures; Financing and Loans; Auto Industry; Shanghai

October 2013
Case

Oaktree and the Restructuring of CIT Group (A)

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

CIT's prepackaged bankruptcy marked the first time a major financial institution was able to successfully restructure and emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, challenging conventional views that a financial firm could not survive bankruptcy proceedings as a going... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Restructuring; Financial Services Industry

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

What Would It Take to Unlock Microfinance's Full Potential?

and we’ve just deployed the first few dozen of each of them. The first is a graduation loan. For many borrowers, it’s hard to get a formal bank loan that’s more than $1,200 but less than $10,000, so we’ve been identifying borrowers from... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint; Financial Services

01 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Dissent in Decision-Making

notion that a large segment of consumers might prefer automobiles that were safe and fuel-efficient. Coca-Cola ignored evidence that "New Coke" would fizzle and launched it anyway. Companies in the mechanical-watch and analog-photography View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

little performance variability—because the tasks are standard, because the firm or industry has reduced variability, or because the business model limits the bandwidth of performance variance. Think about the difference between sales... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (B), The

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

This case provides the outcome to "The Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A)" in which the CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Joint Ventures; Financing and Loans; Auto Industry; Shanghai

May 2024
Case

HarvEast

By: Jeremy Friedman and Natalie Kindred

In late 2023, Dmitry Skornyakov, CEO of Ukrainian agribusiness HarvEast, was navigating the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began in 2014 and escalated into full-scale war in February 2022. Before the full-scale invasion, HarvEast managed 127,000... View Details

Keywords: Goods and Commodities; Natural Resources; Food; Problems and Challenges; Adaptation; Innovation and Management; Crisis Management; Logistics; Supply Chain; Risk and Uncertainty; Loss; Trust; Human Needs; War; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Chile; South America; Latin America; Ukraine

Web

Curriculum - Business & Environment

decisions involving sustainability issues. Cases are set in a variety of industry contexts, including energy, agriculture, transportation, chemicals, and investment. Some of the environment-related cases recently taught (Spring and Fall... View Details

01 Dec 2023
News

Rounding the Bend

Illustration by Fernando Cobelo To help people visualize what a circular economy could look like and bring the challenges down to a closet-sized scale, Emily Bolon (MBA/MPA 2007) recommends the following exercise. First, make a mental tally of the number of garments... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade; Apparel Manufacturing; Manufacturing

Sandra J. Sucher

Sandra Sucher, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, is an internationally recognized trust researcher. The Power of Trust, her third book, is based on two decades of global research on how companies build stakeholder trust and how,... View Details

Keywords: banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking

January 2025
Case

Hebbia: Redefining Productivity for Knowledge Workers Using AI

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Minoshka Narayan

In early 2025, George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia, reflected on the company’s rapid ascent as a pioneer in GenAI-powered productivity tools for knowledge workers. With its proprietary technology, Hebbia had redefined information retrieval and analysis and earned... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Service Delivery; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Banking Industry; Banking Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)

Web

All Functions - Recruiting

Class of 2024 Class of 2023 Class of 2022 Class of 2021 Class of 2020 Sort By: A-Z A-Z Highest to Lowest Lowest to Highest Industry by % Median Base Salary Median Signing Bonus Median Variable Bonus Business Development 8% $145k 25th... View Details

March 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Case

International Rivers Network and the Bujagali Dam Project (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

In the summer of 2002, the International Rivers Network (IRN), an environmental NGO located in Berkeley, California, was engaged in what appeared to be the last hours of a three year campaign to stop a $582 million dam and hydropower project at Bujagali Falls in... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Project Finance; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Projects; Developing Countries and Economies; Energy Industry; Uganda

06 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

The Problem with Hedge Funds

investment management themselves. Sensing this demand, which is what they do best, investment banks are now creating funds, which then are invested in other funds. This is the big new thing, the fund of funds. People who managed funds... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

17 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 17

Publications March 2015 Journal of Financial Economics Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors By: Hanson, Samuel G., Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein, and Robert W. Vishny Abstract—We examine the business model of traditional... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Joseph L. Bower

JOSEPH L. BOWER, Donald K. David Professor Emeritus, has been a leader in general management at Harvard Business School for 51 years. He also served on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School during its first decade. He has served in many administrative roles... View Details

Keywords: banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking; banking

January 2025
Case

A Tiger in the Tank: Exxon Sues Investors

By: Clayton S. Rose, Sarah Sasso and James Weber

In June 2024, investors were trying to make sense of ExxonMobil’s (Exxon) lawsuit against two impact investors, Arjuna Capital (Arjuna) and Follow This, that had just been dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas. Exxon’s suit challenged the rights of two... View Details