Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(800)
- Faculty Publications (182)
- January 2014 (Revised October 2014)
- Supplement
Mittal Steel's Pursuit of Arcelor (B)
By: Paul M. Healy and Penelope Rossano
Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of Mittal Steel, a UK-based company with Indian roots, took advantage of a weakened Arcelor that had successfully won a bidding war for Canadian steel company Dofasco, with an unsolicited bid to buy the company. Mittal's plans for acquiring Arcelor... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Mittal Steel's Pursuit of Arcelor (A)
By: Paul M. Healy and Penelope Rossano
Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of Mittal Steel, a UK-based company with Indian roots, took advantage of a weakened Arcelor that had successfully won a bidding war for Canadian steel company Dofasco, with an unsolicited bid to buy the company. Mittal's plans for acquiring Arcelor... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Showdown at Cracker Barrel
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Tim Gray
In the fall of 2011, activist investor, Sardar Biglari, has acquired nearly 10% ownership in the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. He believes that the board and senior management have failed and the company has underperformed relative to its peers. When he is denied a... View Details
Keywords: Boards; Activist Investors; Proxy Battles; Shareholder Activism; Peer Firm; Ratio Analysis; Financial Accounting; Financial Analysis; Board Of Directors; Boards Of Directors; Financial Intermediaries; Financial Analysts; CEO Turnover; New CEO; Peer Groups; Hedge Fund; Hedge Funds; Proxy Contest; Proxy Fight; Proxy Advisor; Proxy Battle; Financial Statement Analysis; Financial Strategy; Corporate Governance; Corporate Disclosure; Governing and Advisory Boards; Competition; Valuation; Business Strategy; Value Creation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- December 2013
- Article
How Do Staggered Boards Affect Shareholder Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
By: Alma Cohen and Charles C.Y. Wang
The well-established negative correlation between staggered boards (SBs) and firm value could be due to SBs leading to lower value or a reflection of low-value firms' greater propensity to maintain SBs. We analyze the causal question using a natural experiment... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Valuing Yahoo! in 2013
By: Luis M. Viceira and Atul Khosla
In late July 2013, Danielle Engle, Managing Director of Clairemont Capital, was contemplating what to do about a large investment her fund had in the stock of Yahoo! Inc. In mid-2012, Clairemont had invested nearly $75M in Yahoo! after the tech company settled a highly... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised September 2014)
- Case
The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal
By: Lucy White, Benjamin C. Esty and Lisa Mazzanti
On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details
Keywords: Proxy Contest; Proxy Battle; Proxy Advisor; ISS; Glass Lewis ＆ Co.; Hedge Fund; Short Selling; Share Lending; Telecommunications; Voting Rights; Empty Voting; Equity Decoupling; Share Unification; Dual Class Shares; Canada; Exchange Ratio; Shareholder Activism; Shareholder Votes; Investment Activism; Public Equity; Capital Structure; Investment Return; Corporate Governance; Corporate Finance; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation; Telecommunications Industry; Canada; British Columbia; United States; New York (city, NY)
- May 2013
- Article
The Performance Frontier: Innovating for a Sustainable Strategy
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
By now most companies have sustainability programs. They're cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and otherwise enhancing operational efficiency. But a mishmash of sustainability tactics does not add up to a sustainable strategy. To endure, a strategy must address... View Details
- February 2013
- Article
Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge
By: Bo Becker, Guhan Subramanian and Daniel B. Bergstresser
We use the Business Roundtable's challenge to the SEC's 2010 proxy access rule as a natural experiment to measure the value of shareholder proxy access. We find that firms that would have been most vulnerable to proxy access, as measured by institutional ownership and... View Details
- Article
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
By: Sergey Chernenko, C. Fritz Foley and Robin Greenwood
Standard theories of corporate ownership assume that because markets are efficient, insiders ultimately bear all agency costs that they create and therefore have a strong incentive to minimize conflicts of interest with outside investors. We argue that if equity is... View Details
- November 2012
- Teaching Note
Brink's Company: Activists Push for a Spin-off (TN)
By: Suraj Srinivasan
The case this Teaching Note addresses studies the decision of the security services company Brink's Corporation to spin off its home security division from the rest of the company. The decision followed intense pressure on the company by three activist hedge funds that... View Details
- October 2012
- Case
Hill Country Snack Foods Co.
By: W. Carl Kester and Craig Stephenson
Hill Country Snack Foods, located in Austin, Texas, manufactures, markets, and distributes snack foods and frozen treats. The CEO is passionate about maximizing shareholder value and believes in keeping tight control over costs and operating the business as efficiently... View Details
- October 2012
- Article
The Effect of Reference Point Prices on Mergers and Acquisitions
By: Malcolm Baker, Xin Pan and Jeffrey Wurgler
Prior stock price peaks of targets affect several aspects of merger and acquisition activity. Offer prices are biased toward recent peak prices although they are economically unremarkable. An offer's probability of acceptance jumps discontinuously when it exceeds a... View Details
- 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
- November 29, 2011
- Article
The Role of The Board in Creating a Sustainable Strategy
By: Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
While conceptually elegant, the belief that a corporation's role is to maximize value for shareholders is under increasing challenge as society's expectations for companies change. An equally elegant new concept that takes account of these dual pressures has yet to... View Details
Keywords: Value Creation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions; Risk and Uncertainty; Cost vs Benefits; Information
- November 2011
- Case
Brink's Company: Activists Push for a Spin-off
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Aldo Sesia and Amy Kaser
The case studies the decision of the security services corporation Brink's Company to spin-off its home security division from the rest of the company. The decision followed intense pressure on the company by three activist hedge funds that felt that Brink's was... View Details
- October 2011
- Case
Strategy and Governance at Yahoo! Inc.
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan, David Lane and Ian McKown Cornell
Yahoo! faces a number of governance and strategic challenges in late 2011 as it tries to compete with rivals such as Google and find ways to monetize its shareholding and business links with Alibaba Group in China and Yahoo! Japan. The company is now valued at almost... View Details
- August 2011 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Boardroom Battle Behind Bars: Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings—A Corporate Governance Drama
By: William C. Kirby and Tracy Yuen Manty
Despite widespread news of the incarceration of Gome Electronics' CEO, Huang Guangyu, Bain Capital felt they carefully undertook due diligence before making a significant investment in the company. The venture capital firm was confident that it and the current... View Details
Keywords: China; Legal Aspects Of Business; Corruption; Risk; Corporate Governance; Crime and Corruption; Power and Influence; Risk Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Venture Capital; Ethics; Governing and Advisory Boards; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Values and Beliefs; Private Equity; China
- May 2011
- Article
Consequences and Institutional Determinants of Unregulated Corporate Financial Statements: Evidence from Embedded Value Reporting
By: George Serafeim
I analyze Embedded Value (EV) reporting by firms with life insurance operations to assess the impact of unregulated financial reporting on transparency and to examine the institutional characteristics that promote unregulated reporting. Under EV accounting the present... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised April 2012)
- Case
Braddock Industries, Inc.
This case examines the drivers of economic value creation for shareholders, and how these drivers are reflected in various incentive compensation programs for management. The case also looks at how the economic performance of business units can be evaluated using... View Details