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- September 2025
- Article
Public Disclosure of Private Meetings: Does Observing Peers’ Information Acquisition Affect Analysts’ Attention Allocation?
By: Yi Ru, Ronghuo Zheng and Yuan Zou
We investigate the impact of observing peers’ information acquisition on financial analysts’ allocation of attention. Using the timely disclosure mandate by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as a setting, we find that, shortly after analysts observe that a firm has been... View Details
- July 2025 (Revised July 2025)
- Case
Microsoft’s Performance Across Three CEOs
By: George Serafeim
This case traces Microsoft’s evolution from its founding through 2025. Students analyze how changes in operating segments both reflected and shaped Microsoft’s strategy, culture, and financial communication. The case provides rich quantitative exhibits (segment... View Details
Keywords: Financial Accounting; Financial Statement Analysis; Disclosure; Disclosure Strategy; Disclosure Tone; Organizational Transformations; Transformation; AI; Digital; Organizational Change; Accounting; Financial Statements; Strategy; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States
- 2025
- Working Paper
Heterogeneous Beliefs and Stock Market Fluctuations
By: Odhrain McCarthy and Sebastian Hillenbrand
This paper examines the role of heterogeneous investor beliefs in explaining stock market puzzles. Using survey data, we show that individual investors and investment professionals, such as equity analysts and strategists, form distinct beliefs. These groups rely on... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Finance Without Exotic Risk
By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Rafael La Porta and Andrei Shleifer
We address the joint hypothesis problem in cross-sectional asset pricing by using measured analyst expectations of earnings growth. We construct a firm-level measure of Expectations Based Returns (EBRs) that uses analyst forecast errors and revisions and shuts down any... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
The Walt Disney Company: Management Guidance
By: Joseph Pacelli and James Weber
In November 2023, financial analyst Aurora Fee was forecasting The Walt Disney Company’s earnings and stock price, with the goal of providing an investment recommendation to her clients. Disney, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies, had just... View Details
- June 2024
- Case
Arete Research on Unity Software
By: Joseph Pacelli and Tonia Labruyere
Richard Kramer had founded Arete Research, an independent financial research provider, in 2000 after a successful career as a sell-side analyst at Goldman Sachs. He reflects on his team's coverage of Unity Software, a U.S.-based mobile games software company, that... View Details
- June 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Accounting for Loans at SoFi Technologies
By: Joseph Pacelli and Michael Norris
At the release of its first quarter earnings report on May 1, 2023, digital bank SoFi beat its earnings guidance by 25%. On May 2, Wedbush Securities analyst David Chiaverini issued a report downgrading the stock. A second downgrade followed from Chiaverini on May 15.... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
CLSA: Integrating ESG in Stock Valuation
By: Shirley Lu, Aaron Yoon and Billy Chan
In 2023, a senior financial analyst at the Hong Kong-based stock brokerage firm CLSA was surprised to see that, based on his calculations, the financial impact from climate risks on a major Indian cement manufacturing company’s projected earnings could be massive.... View Details
- July 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Equity Restructuring at Dell Technologies: Buy Out, Buy Up, Buy In (A)
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott
In November 2018, Dell Technologies was poised to re-enter the public markets by means of a complex recapitalization that would replace an entire class of publicly-traded “tracking stock,” with new shares that would trade publicly without the need of a formal IPO. The... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
Investing in the Climate Transition at Neuberger Berman
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
By mid-2023, Neuberger Berman (NB), an active asset manager, had grown its assets under management to about half a trillion dollars and took pride in its client centricity and innovative spirit. Responding to client demand for investment products that integrated... View Details
Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Sustainability; Decarbonization; Performance; Risk Assessment; Opportunities; Environmental Sustainability; Carbon Footprint; Business Analysis; Investing; Regulation; Asset Management; Investment Strategy; Climate Change; Transition; Analysis; Product Positioning; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry
- June 2023
- Case
Accounting for Loan Losses at JPMorgan Chase: Predicting Credit Costs
By: Jonas Heese, Jung Koo Kang and James Weber
The case examines the accounting for loan losses at a large bank, how a bank sets its Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) on its financial statements. ALLL, and the rules that set them, determine when banks would and would not extend loans, which significantly... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
Close Concerns: Diabetes Research and Advocacy
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker
This case describes the Exit considerations of Kelly Close, HBS MBA, and founder of the primary distributor of diabetes newsletters. It is part of the fourth module in the Innovating in Health Care HBS MBA course, which contains cases of other health care firms that... View Details
- February 2023
- Teaching Note
Bear to Bull? An Analyst’s Journey with Netflix
By: Aiyesha Dey and Joseph Pacelli
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 123-001. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said “hell freezing over” was more likely than him upgrading the “sell” rating he had maintained on movie and television streaming giant Netflix since 2011, despite meteoric subscriber... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised July 2025)
- Case
Driving Decarbonization at BMW
The case describes BMW’s electrification and decarbonization strategy, and how the company measured carbon emissions throughout the life cycle of its vehicles and used tools like carbon abatement cost curves to evaluate decarbonization opportunities. In mid-2022,... View Details
Keywords: Decarbonization; Climate Change; Environment; Sustainability; Carbon Accounting; Carbon; Carbon Abatement; Electric Vehicles; Automobiles; Transportation; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Management; Environmental Sustainability; Accounting; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Supply Chain; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry; Battery Industry; Germany; China; United States; Europe
- September 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Bear to Bull: An Analyst’s Journey with Netflix
By: Aiyesha Dey, Joseph Pacelli, Jennifer G. Lawson and Tom Quinn
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said “hell freezing over” was more likely than him upgrading the “sell” rating he had maintained on movie and television streaming giant Netflix since 2011, despite meteoric subscriber and share price growth. In 2022, however,... View Details
- Article
The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market
By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni
We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details
- Article
Core Earnings: New Data and Evidence
By: Ethan Rouen, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang
Using a novel dataset, we show that components of firms' GAAP earnings stemming from ancillary business activities or transitory shocks are significant in frequency and magnitude. These components have grown over time and are dispersed across various sections of the... View Details
- December 2021
- Article
Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts
By: Elisabeth Kempf and Margarita Tsoutsoura
Partisan perception affects the actions of professionals in the financial sector. Using a novel dataset linking credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that analysts who are not affiliated with the U.S. president’s party downward-adjust... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness
By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim
As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which... View Details
Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Accounting Standards; Sustainability; Nonfinancial Information; Corporate Social Responsibility; Stock Price Informativeness; Synchronicity; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Stocks; Price; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Accounting; Standards
- June 2021 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
MicroStrategy: Accounting for Cryptocurrency
By: Jonas Heese and Annelena Lobb
On February 15, 2021, Alina Moss, an analyst who covered the technology company MicroStrategy, pondered a rise in MicroStrategy’s share price. Moss had dialed into the company earnings call. When it ended, Moss had more questions than answers. MicroStrategy had... View Details