Publications

August 2004 (Revised February 2008)
Case

Land Securities Group (A): Choosing Cost or Fair Value on Adoption of IFRS

A U.K. real estate firm, required to adopt international accounting standards (IAS) by 2005, must change the reporting of its primary asset (investment property) from the revaluation model under U.K. GAAP to either the cost or fair-value model under IAS. This would... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; International Accounting; Investment; Standards; Real Estate Industry; Europe; United Kingdom

December 2007
Article

Applying Modern Risk Management to Equity and Credit Analysis

By: Robert C. Merton

Traditional conventions of accounting and actuarial science distort the valuation of capital risk in corporations with pension plans because under these conventions, pension assets and liabilities are not included in balance sheet calculations. The modern risk... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Valuation; Financial Reporting; Decision Making; Credit; Financial Statements; Capital; Equity; Compensation and Benefits

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Research Summary

Research Overview

Eddie Riedl's research focuses on two primary topics: fair value accounting, and international accounting settings.

Regarding fair value accounting, his research examines both the critical reporting choices that managers make, as well as... View Details

Research Summary

The Cross Section of Expected Firm (Not Equity) Returns

This paper provides the first comprehensive study of expected firm (unlevered equity) returns. After accounting for the debt component of the firm return, I find that many of the cross sectional determinants of expected equity returns, such as the book-to-market... View Details

June 2012 (Revised August 2012)
Case

MF Global: Where's the Money?

By: Clayton S. Rose, Pamela Chan and Raghav Chopra

When MF Global failed in October of 2011, it was discovered that $1.6 billion of segregated customer assets was missing. Safeguarding these assets was the firm's responsibility, and in the words of one SEC official, its "sacred obligation." What is known about the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Firms; Customer Obligations; Bankruptcy; Regulation; Financial Crisis; Brokerage; Asset Management; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Management; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Services Industry

06 Jan 2006
News

Made to Measure Is the Best Fit for Future Pensioners

March 2011 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Wealth Management Crisis at UBS (A)

By: Paul M. Healy

The case describes the challenges that UBS faced as a result of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for tax fraud, that claimed that UBS had helped some 52,000 U.S. residents hide billions of dollars in untaxed assets in secret Swiss accounts between... View Details

2014
Chapter

Remapping the Flow of Funds

By: Juliane Begenau, Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider

This article argues that quantitative analysis of credit market positions would benefit tremendously if the additional information about the structure of payment streams were more readily available. Most available data on credit market positions, such as the Flow of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Credit

May 2020
Teaching Note

Kraft Heinz: The $8 Billion Brand Write-Down

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-076. On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

March 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

China: To Float or Not To Float? (D)- Bank of America's Strategic Investment in China Construction Bank

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

With its $3 billion investment in Chinese state bank China Construction Bank, Bank of America--the second U.S. bank behind Citigroup in terms of assets and market capitalization--was one of several foreign banks directly participating in China's banking sector reform.... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Banks and Banking; Foreign Direct Investment; International Relations; Banking Industry; China; United States

February 2005
Article

Managing the Ecosystem

By: Marco Iansiti

The days of the corporate lone wolf are over. In our increasingly interconnected world, standing alone is no longer a viable business model. Instead, smart companies rely heavily on networks of partners, suppliers, and customers to achieve market success and sustain... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Corporate Reporting; Partners and Partnerships; Industry Clusters; Customers; Markets; Situation or Environment; Banks and Banking; Insurance; Software

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2016
Article

Cloaked Trading

By: Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou and Christopher J. Malloy

Using a novel, proprietary database of micro-level trading activities by asset managers, we show strong evidence of asset managers engaging in strategic trading in order to “cloak” their most valuable trades. This takes the form, for instance, of a manager who sells... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Trading; Information; Asset Management; Investment

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12 Jul 2016
First Look

July 12, 2016

Calibrating the model to data from the Financial Accounts of the U.S., the optimal capital requirement is around 20%. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51305 Bias in Official Fiscal Forecasts: Can... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Carol Brewer's Investments

By: Richard S. Ruback and Julia Stevens

Following her husband's death in 1994, Carol Brewer took over the management of her family's investments. This case describes the decisions Brewer made during this process, including her choice to seek active account management, her selection of an investment firm, and... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Retirement; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Management; Personal Finance; Investment Banking; Investment Return

29 Jul 2017
News

Fund managers challenged to confront lack of ethnic diversity

18 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

After the 'Crypto Crash,' What's Next for Digital Currencies?

Kominers: For the past six months, we’ve been tilting into a state of overall financial uncertainty. Crypto assets are very volatile, in part because there’s so much uncertainty about which crypto technologies are likely to be the most... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Financial Services; Technology

2024
Working Paper

What Drives Variation in Investor Portfolios? Estimating the Roles of Beliefs and Risk Preferences

By: Mark Egan, Alexander MacKay and Hanbin Yang

We present an empirical model of portfolio choice that allows for the nonparametric estimation of investors' (subjective) expectations and risk preferences. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 401(k) plans from 2009 through 2019, we explore heterogeneity in asset... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market Expectations; Demand Estimation; Retirement Planning; Defined Contribution Retirement Plan; 401 (K); Finance; Investment Portfolio; Investment; Retirement; Behavioral Finance; Financial Services Industry; United States

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December 2019 (Revised June 2024)
Case

The Dutch East India Company in 1612 (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

The Dutch East India Company’s board of directors must decide what to do about an impending legal requirement to liquidate the company’s assets and return to shareholders their capital and any profits earned during a ten-year lock-up period. The charter granted to the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Laws and Statutes; Financial Markets; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business History; Shipping Industry; Netherlands

2024
Working Paper

Economic Budgeting for Endowment-Dependent Universities

By: John Y. Campbell, Jeremy C. Stein and Alex A. Wu

To understand their financial position, universities need to understand the long-term implications of their operating revenues and costs in relation to the financial assets they have available. Standard budgeting procedures that focus on one or two years at a time and... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cash Flow; Cost; Revenue; Education Industry