Shareholder - Publications - Faculty & Research

June 1989 (Revised July 1989)
Case

Coniston vs. Gillette: Communications in a Proxy Fight

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Communication; Governing and Advisory Boards

17 Nov 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

How Activist Investors Became Respectable

online well before any regulatory filing disclosed his holdings in the company. These tactics may have been designed for drama, but the investment strategy and its scale are nothing unusual today. Activist shareholders and the hedge funds... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller; Financial Services; Banking

01 Aug 2005
What Do You Think?

Is There an “Efficient Market” in CEO Compensation?

shareholders into a more active participative role, CEO compensation along with other governance challenges such as agency issues will continue to plague companies." Julie Dotson-Shaffer put it most succinctly: "Every contract... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

April 2012 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Merck: Operating Science-Based Business

By: Ananth Raman, Inga Maurer and William Schmidt

Merck is known for its commitment to investing in basic R&D. Are Merck's long-term investments justifiable when the firm faces extreme earnings pressure? View Details

Keywords: Science-Based Business; Management; Research and Development; Business and Shareholder Relations; Operations; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

January 1999 (Revised October 2010)
Background Note

Accumulated Earnings Tax and Personal Holding Company Tax

By: Henry B. Reiling and Mark Pollard

Identifies Congress's concerns and objectives in adopting the Accumulated Earnings Tax and the Personal Holding Company Tax. Also describes the provisions' mechanics and some of their practical implications. View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Taxation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Public Administration Industry; United States

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April 2011
Article

Local Dividend Clienteles

We exploit demographic variation to identify the effect of dividend demand on corporate payout policy. Retail investors tend to hold local stocks, and older investors prefer dividend-paying stocks. Together, these tendencies generate geographically varying demand for... View Details

Keywords: Business Headquarters; Demographics; Investment; Geographic Location; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations

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11 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

The Future of Boards

maximizing shareholder value as the primary focus and motivation for a corporation's existence” Topics tackled include how boards can most effectively oversee company strategy, CEO succession, and executive compensation. Also considered... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

24 Apr 2014
News

A lifetime investment in the entrepreneurial spirit

to entrepreneurs ‘We've been where you're going,’ and really mean it.” Bowes was also the founding shareholder of Amgen and its first chairman and treasurer. Prior to founding USVP, he had success as a venture capitalist with companies... View Details

October 20, 2023
Article

How ENGOs Can Support Corporate Climate Change Efforts

By: Michael W. Toffel

Nearly half of CEOs view climate change as affecting their companies now or within the coming decade, but there is also a wide gap between what CEOs say is progress on tackling climate change and what many of their investors believe are effective actions. Companies... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Shareholder Relations

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21 Nov 2019
Blog Post

Finding My North Star at the Crossroads of Profit and Purpose

and career choices. Graduating from IIT Kharagpur, I decided to join Schlumberger – the world’s largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger, founded in 1926, in many ways reminded me of Tata Steel, a company that cares for its people while returning value to its... View Details

01 Jun 1998
News

Long-Term Interest: Bill Crozier, a Banker Pegged to the Customer

about how the current business scene is heavily skewed toward the shareholder. "Certainly the shareholder is important," he notes. "However, the shareholder role has gotten out of balance with the other... View Details

Keywords: Eileen K. McCluskey

01 Sep 2006
News

Strange Bedfellows

Since when do the taxman and the shareholder agree? IRS Commissioner Mark Everson and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox (MBA 1976) have advanced a simple, but controversial proposal. Companies would be required to disclose how much they pay in... View Details

Keywords: Mihir A. Desai; Government

20 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Using Investor Relations Proactively

both companies had to learn how to cope with the increasing interest in their business—not only by their traditional shareholders but also by new classes of share- and stakeholders. Total, for example, is followed closely by its... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

29 Apr 2002
Research & Ideas

Star Power! How to Win in Professional Services

to question, debate, and even oppose initiatives with which they disagree—and often do so. Corporate CEOs also tend to deal with their shareholders periodically and at a distance. True, they have to talk with analysts at least quarterly,... View Details

Keywords: by Jay W. Lorsch & Thomas J. Tierney

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

Greed, Fear, and The System Hinder Corporate Reform

governance. According to Grace Hinchman, senior vice president for public affairs at Financial Executives International, chief financial officers need to become more responsive to a smarter audit committee, and shareholders have a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

Speculation and Credit - Coin and Conscience – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

speculation in the stock market and lottery is a recurring theme in the following prints. "Before and after" depictions of shareholders were a particular favorite—admonishing the viewer that fortunes made from speculation can be lost... View Details

16 Feb 2011
News

Healthy Growth

Ayers described himself as a “principles-based leader”. “Our purpose is to create exceptional long-term value for customers, employees, and shareholders by enhancing the health and well-being of pets, livestock, and people,” he... View Details

Keywords: veterinary medicine; Health, Social Assistance

02 Jul 2010
What Do You Think?

Is Profit as a “Direct Goal” Overrated?

Kay puts it, "The mistake is to make inferences about the relationships between outcomes and processes when we cannot observe and do not understand the processes themselves." The argument is that those things that contribute to long-term View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

Article

Managing the Narrative: Investor Relations Officers and Their Interactions with Sell-Side Analysts and Institutional Investors

By: Lawrence D. Brown, Andrew C. Call, Michael B. Clement and Nathan Y. Sharp

Investor relations officers (IROs) play a central role in corporate communications with Wall Street. We survey 610 IROs at U.S. public companies and conduct 14 follow-up interviews to deepen our understanding of the role of IROs in corporate disclosure events. Three... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Power and Influence; Business and Shareholder Relations

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May 2012
Article

Global, Local, and Contagious Investor Sentiment

By: Malcolm Baker, Jeffrey Wurgler and Yu Yuan

We construct investor sentiment indices for six major stock markets and decompose them into one global and six local indices. In a validation test, we find that relative sentiment is correlated with the relative prices of dual-listed companies. Global sentiment is a... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Globalization; Stocks; Markets; Capital; Financial Services Industry

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