Publications

April 2025
Case

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations

By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan

Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils—despite having stepped... View Details

Keywords: Shareholder; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Diversification; Conflict and Resolution; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom

March 2024
Supplement

ELCA's Series A Cap Table Exercise (Instructor Version)

By: Raymond Kluender and Anke Becker

In ELCA, the company must decide between two term sheets: one put forth by STV and one put forth by ESV.

This exercise is an analysis of the implications of these two term sheets on the ownership structure and the payouts of common and preferred... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Venture Capital; Investment; Ownership Stake

March 2024
Supplement

ELCA's Series A Cap Table Exercise (Student Version)

By: Raymond Kluender, Anke Becker and Johnson Elugbadebo

In ELCA, the company must decide between two term sheets: one put forth by STV and one put forth by ESV.

This exercise is an analysis of the implications of these two term sheets on the ownership structure and the payouts of common and preferred... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Venture Capital; Investment; Ownership Stake

February 2024
Case

Adventures Inc: 21st Century Brand Building

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

Founded in 2020, Adventures worked with celebrities in Brazil to create and launch digitally native brands. The idea was to match the celebrity’s skill in creating content and entertaining fans with Adventures’ skill in consumer packaged goods marketing and operations.... View Details

Keywords: Digital Brand; Influencer Marketing; Growth And Scaling; Capital Constraints; Brand Portfolio Strategy; CPG; Start-up; Celebrity Endorsement; Digital Marketing; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Advertising; Social Media; Business Startups; Joint Ventures; Brands and Branding; Brazil

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

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Family Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Family and Family Relationships; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Chemical Industry; Mining Industry; Financial Services Industry; Latin America

September–October 2023
Article

What Does 'Stakeholder Capitalism' Mean to You?: A Guide to the Four Main Types

By: Lynn S. Paine

Business leaders are being urged to adopt a multistakeholder approach to governance in place of the shareholder-centered approach that has guided their work for several decades. But through hundreds of interviews with directors, executives, investors, governance... View Details

Keywords: Stakeholder Capitalism; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Organizational Structure; Trust

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January 2023 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Peloton Interactive (A)

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine and David Lane

Early in February 2022, the board of Peloton Interactive faced some knotty challenges. Immense pandemic demand for its stationary exercise bicycles and treadmills had prompted the firm to scale up production rapidly. But as gyms reopened and the virulence of the virus... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth Management; Investment Activism; Leadership; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Sports Industry; United States

2022
Article

Pills in a World of Activism and ESG

By: Guhan Subramanian and Caley Petrucci

Easterbrook and Fischel’s The Economic Structure of Corporate Law advances their now famous passivity thesis, which posits that managers should remain passive in the face of an unsolicited tender offer for the company’s shares. Consistent with the broader... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Governance Controls; Business and Shareholder Relations

September 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Esas Group: Investing Together, Staying Together

By: Christina R. Wing and Alpana Thapar

This case opens in June 2022, after Esas Group, one of Turkey’s largest family-owned investment firms, implements a series of changes to professionalize the business and help transition family members from operators to responsible investors. In December 2019, the Group... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Transition; Business or Company Management; Organizational Structure; Governing and Advisory Boards; Governance; Financial Services Industry; Turkey

August 2022
Case

One Tiger Per Mountain: The He Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen, Fei Wu and Grace Headinger

Roy He, founder and majority shareholder of his family construction material production company, was preparing to pass down the family business through its first generational handover to his children. His decision would establish his familial legacy and set a precedent... View Details

Keywords: Governance Structure; Family Business; Family Ownership; Strategic Planning; Family and Family Relationships; Leadership; Construction Industry; Canton (city, China); Canton (province, China); China

Article

B Corps: Can It Remake Capitalism in Japan?

By: Geoffrey Jones

This article examines the B Corporation movement that originated in the United States in 2006. The founders sought to create a new type of company whose governance structure mandated them to consider financial, social and environmental performance. A certification... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Responsibility; Sustainability; B Corporations; Stakeholder Capitalism; Governance; Organizational Structure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Japan

2021
Working Paper

Governance Transparency and Firm Value: Evidence from Korean Chaebols

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang

We examine Korean business groups' transition from circular-shareholding structures to (relatively simple) pyramidal-shareholding structures between 2011 and 2018. When firms were removed from ownership loops, chaebol families' control or incentive conflicts in them... View Details

Keywords: Business Groups; Cross Shareholding; Circular Shareholding; Pyramidal Ownership; Governance Transparency; Ownership Transparency; Earnings Response Coefficient; Business Conglomerates; Corporate Governance; Valuation; Business Earnings

SSRN

January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Delta Air Lines: Navigating the COVID-19 Storm

By: Ted Berk and Ryan Flamerich

This case examines Delta Air Lines’ response as demand for its services plummeted in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on the company’s funding needs and capital structure. Following a series of initial actions, the company’s cash “burn” had reduced from... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Financial Condition; Capital Structure; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Air Transportation Industry

2021
Working Paper

No-fault Default, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and Financial Institutions

By: Robert C. Merton and Richard T. Thakor

This paper analyzes the costs and benefits of a no-fault-default debt structure as an alternative to the typical bankruptcy process. We show that the deadweight costs of bankruptcy can be avoided or substantially reduced through no-fault-default debt, which permits a... View Details

Keywords: No-fault Default; Chapter 11; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Borrowing and Debt; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Institutions; Contracts

November 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Roll-Ups and Surprise Billing: Collisions at the Intersection of Private Equity and Patient Care

By: Trevor Fetter and Kira Seiger

This case describes the increasing investment by private equity (PE) firms in patient care and other healthcare services. The case focuses on investments in physician staffing firms and roll-up strategy investments in physician practice management (PPM). Included in... View Details

January 2020 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

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

December 2019 (Revised June 2024)
Supplement

The Dutch East India Company in 1612 (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

The case relates the decision made in the A case and what happened in the aftermath. 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