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- October 2024
- Case
Sacoor Brothers: From Co-Family CEOs to No Family CEOs?
By: Lauren Cohen, David Ager and Alpana Thapar
Sacoor Brothers, a luxury clothing retail company, was founded in 1989 in Lisbon, Portugal, by four brothers—Malik, Salim, Rahimo, and Moez. After establishing a strong presence in Portugal, the brothers were drawn to the rapidly growing retail markets in the Middle... View Details
Keywords: Growth; Geographic Mobility; Family Office; Professionalization; Institutional Development; Second-generation; Third-generation; Family Business; Private Equity; Investment; Governance; Transition; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Succession; Market Entry and Exit; Family and Family Relationships; Expansion; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Middle East; United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia; Portugal; Jordan; Dubai
- October 2024
- Case
Estímulo: Blended Finance in Brazil
By: Vikram S. Gandhi, James Barnett, Maxim Pike Harrell and Marina Osborn
In December 2022, Estímulo—a Brazilian impact investment fund supporting small businesses—found itself at a crossroads. The fund was established in 2020 to provide emergency relief through accessible credit and financial education. When low default rates from borrowers... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Bank Capital and the Growth of Private Credit
By: Sergey Chernenko, Robert Ialenti and David Scharfstein
We show that business development companies (BDCs)—closed-end funds that provide a
significant share of nonbank loans to middle market firms—are very well capitalized according
to bank capital frameworks. They have median risk-based capital ratios of about 36%... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Effects of Medical Debt Relief: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments
By: Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong and Wesley Yin
Two in five Americans have medical debt, nearly half of whom owe at least $2,500. Concerned by this burden, governments and private donors have undertaken large, high-profile efforts to relieve medical debt. We partnered with RIP Medical Debt to conduct two randomized... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Gabon Special Economic Zone
By: John Macomber and Wale Lawal
Tropical rain forest covers about 80% of the West African nation of Gabon, part of the Congo Basin and the "lungs of the world." Gabon is one of the first nations to earn revenue from carbon sequestration...as long as the rain forest remains intact. There are... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Votorantim: Uniting Family and Business Across Generations
By: Christina R. Wing, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo
Over a 105-year span, the Ermírio de Moraes family built Votorantim, one of Latin America’s largest industrial conglomerates, and among Brazil’s topmost businesses, also credited for helping “build” the country over decades. By early 2023, Votorantim included... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans
By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim
Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details
- October 2022
- Article
Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets
By: Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger
We provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the currency composition of sovereign and corporate external borrowing by emerging markets from 2003 to 2017. We show that a higher reliance on foreign currency debt by the corporate sector is associated with... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19
By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam
The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Francisco Partners Private Credit Opportunity Fund
By: Luis M. Viceira, John D. Dionne, Soracha Prathanrasnikorn and Ari Sunshine
In April 2020, Scott Einsenberg, the Head of Credit at the private equity firm Francisco Partners, is deciding whether to go ahead with extending a private lending agreement to Eventbrite, Inc. (NYSE: EB), a leading global event management and online ticketing... View Details
- Fall 2020
- Article
Business Credit Programs in the Pandemic Era
By: Samuel G. Hanson, Jeremy C. Stein, Adi Sunderam and Eric Zwick
We develop a pair of models that speak to the goals and design of the sort of business-lending and corporate-bond purchase programs that have been introduced by governments in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An overarching theme is that, in contrast to the... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
SK Group: Social Progress Credits
By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg
SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength... View Details
Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Social Value; Social Development; Conglomerates; Measurement Of Purpose; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Capital Markets; Innovation; Environmental Impact; Collaboration; Social Enterprise; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Measurement and Metrics; Value Creation; Cooperation; Environmental Sustainability; Employment; Accounting; Energy Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Chemical Industry; South Korea
- November–December 2019
- Article
Making Sense of Soft Information: Interpretation Bias and Loan Quality
By: Dennis Campbell, Maria Loumioti and Regina Wittenberg Moerman
We explore whether behavioral biases impede the effective processing and interpretation of soft information in private lending. Taking advantage of the internal reporting system of a large federal credit union, we delineate three important biases likely to affect the... View Details
- August 2019
- Case
Subscription Lines Dilemma
By: Victoria Ivashina and Terrence Shu
This case follows a fictional managing partner of a private equity firm, as she contemplates whether to utilize subscription lines of credit in her firm’s funds. Subscription lines are revolving lines of credit secured by commitments from a fund’s investors. Private... View Details
- February 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Pierre Foods Acquisition of Advance Foods (A)
By: Guhan Subramanian and Mike Harmon
This case (A), and its related cases (B-E), establish a setting to discuss an M&A transaction and some of the key legal contracts that are associated with it. In 2010, private equity backed food manufacturer Pierre Foods is contemplating the acquisition of a key... View Details
- January 2019
- Case
First Aid Beauty
By: Karen Mills and Annie Dang
In 2008, Lilli Gordon, an experienced financial and skincare entrepreneur, founded First Aid Beauty (FAB). She had discovered a white space in the prestige beauty market: high-end skin solutions that were suitable for sensitive skin. After initial success through... View Details
- Article
Space, the Final Economic Frontier
After decades of centralized control of economic activity in space, NASA and U.S. policymakers have begun to cede the direction of human activities in space to commercial companies. NASA garnered more than 0.7% of GDP in the mid-1960s but is only around 0.1% of GDP... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Infrastructure in Nigeria: Unlocking Pension Fund Investments
By: John Macomber and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The so-called “infrastructure finance gap” was a problem in Nigeria as in many parts of the world. Infrastructure projects like power plants and dams were very large capital investments that could generate long-term consistent cash flows, but their financing and... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Colombia's 4G Road Program: The Pacífico 3 Bond Offer
By: John Macomber, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal
Colombia conceived its 4G (Fourth Generation) Road Program to try to attract $17 billion from the private sector for investment in toll roads. The nation had also created the National Infrastructure Agency of Colombia (ANI) to oversee multiple investments, and the... View Details
Keywords: Private Public Partnerships; Infrastructure; Projects; Finance; Emerging Markets; Colombia
- January 2018 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Capital Allocation at HCA
By: W. Carl Kester and Emily R. McComb
In early 2017, HCA Holdings, an investor-owned hospital management company, faced a strategically important capital allocation decision. After the exit of its private equity sponsors in 2016, HCA had to determine how best to allocate its substantial annual free cash... View Details
Keywords: Capital Allocation; Cash Distribution Policy; Dividends; Share Repurchases; Growth Strategy And Execution; Growth Investing; Capital Expenditures; Debt Management; Debt Reduction; Debt Policy; Hospital Management; Investor-owned Hospital Chains; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Corporate Finance; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; United States