Are current syndicated loan alliances related to past alliances?

The odds of a current syndicate relationship between two lenders depend upon their previous alliances. The odds are significantly higher [lower] and strongest for a current lead–participant relationship with a continuation [reversal] of their previous roles. To illustrate, the odds are nearly four times higher when two lenders have allied in the previous 5 years. The strength of lead–participant syndicate relationships between two lenders with same-ordered roles is most sensitive to the lead bank’s reputation and informationally opaque participants tend to have stronger relationships with lead banks. Lenders exhibit home bias in their syndicate alliances since ongoing relationships are stronger with domestic counterparts.     

Private equity alliances in mergers

This paper examines reasons for alliance formation between private equity bidders when compared to sole-sponsored private equity deals. Testing a comprehensive set of hypotheses, we find strong evidence for the relative-risk hypothesis of Robinson (2008), as private bidders are more likely to form an alliance in a diversifying acquisition. We also find that private equity alliances involved more profitable target firms when compared to sole-sponsored private equity deals. Finally, we find that the significantly lower abnormal returns for target firms in private equity alliance deals are eliminated once we control for differences in the types of target firms acquired by private equity alliances and single private equity bidders. The last result suggests that private equity alliances do not generate significantly lower target returns because of collusion.     

International risk sharing is better than you think, or exchange rates are too smooth

Exchange rates depreciate by the difference between domestic and foreign marginal utility growth or discount factors. Exchange rates vary a lot, as much as 15% per year. However, equity premia imply that marginal utility growth varies much more, by at least 50% per year. Therefore, marginal utility growth must be highly correlated across countries: international risk sharing is better than you think. Conversely, if risks really are not shared internationally, exchange rates should vary more than they do: exchange rates are too smooth. We calculate an index of international risk sharing that formalizes this intuition. We treat carefully the realistic case of incomplete capital markets. We contrast our estimates with the poor risk sharing suggested by consumption data and home-bias portfolio calculations.     

Simple rules for making alliances work

Corporate alliances are growing in number--by about 25% a year--and account for up to a third of revenues and value at many companies. Yet some 60% to 70% of them fail. What is going wrong? Because alliances involve interdependence between companies that may be competitors and may also have vastly different operating styles and cultures, they demand more care and handling than other business arrangements, say Hughes and Weiss, management consultants at Vantage Partners. The authors have developed five principles--based on their two decades of work with alliances -to complement the conventional advice on alliance management: (1) Focus less on defining the business plan and more on how you and your partner will work together. (2) Develop metrics pegged not only to alliance goals but also to performance in working toward them. (3) Instead of trying to eliminate differences, leverage them to create value. (4) Go beyond formal systems and structures to enable and encourage collaborative behavior. (5) Be as diligent in managing your internal stakeholders as you are in managing the relationship with your partner. Companies that have adopted these principles have radically improved their alliance success rate. Schering-Plough, for example, engages in a systematic "alliance relationship launch": four to six weeks of meetings at which the partners explore potential challenges, examine key differences and develop shared protocols for managing them, and establish mechanisms for day-to-day decision making. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida measures the quality of alliance progress through regular surveys of both its own staff and its partners'. These companies have learned that the conventional advice is not so much wrong as incomplete. The five simple rules can help fill in the blanks.     

Do alliances promote knowledge flows?

We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flows, we find results that are consistent with these expectations. We then explore how firm characteristics affect knowledge flows within alliances and find positive effects due to technological, geographic, and business similarities between partners. We use alliance data from MERIT, patent data from the USPTO, and firm data from Compustat.     

Domestic airline alliances and consumer welfare

This article investigates the consumer welfare consequences of the recent code‐share agreement between Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines. We develop a discrete choice model based on individual flight characteristics. This structural model recognizes that consumers (i) may have heterogeneous preferences for flight attributes, and (ii) may face different prices for the same flight. The empirical methodology also deals with the measurement error problem stemming from the absence of consumer‐level data on prices. The estimation results suggest that, whereas the code‐share agreement did not impact consumers significantly on average, it increased the average surplus of connecting passengers but decreased the average surplus of nonstop passengers. Interestingly, the magnitude of our welfare results may be attributed in large part to changes in product characteristics other than prices.     

Information asymmetry and international strategic alliances

This paper examines how information asymmetry affects cross-border strategic alliance formation by US firms over the period 2000–2008. We construct a measure, information costs, based on both geographical distance and the proportion of worldwide GDP the partner’s home country represents. Consistent with our expectations, we find an inverse association between information costs and cross-border strategic alliances. When considering the proportion of alliances formed with publicly quoted overseas partners, we find this is unaffected by the level of information costs but rather the level of stock market development, tax rate and general economic conditions. Information costs are, however, significantly negatively related to alliances with overseas private organizations. Our results offer clear support for the on-going importance of information asymmetry in corporate decision making.     

The way to win in cross-border alliances

Global competition has paved the way to new corporate combinations--and opened up new pitfalls along the way. In "The Way to Win in Cross-Border Alliances," Joel Bleeke and David Ernst offer the unconventional lessons of their study of 49 cross-border alliances. For example, alliances between a weak and a strong company usually don't work; but fifty-fifty ownership of joint ventures actually improves decision making.     

车算盘之换车篇

长时间面对一辆车,你也许有些厌倦;车型每天都在推陈出新,你也许受到诱惑;自己的老伙计跑了十几万公里,继续服役也许力不从心.当你遇到这些问题时,说明你该换辆座驾了,但之前应该把你的老伙计妥善处理.     

Berliet, the obstructed manager: too clever, too soon?

Marius Berliet, a pioneer of the car industry, was one of the first to introduce Taylorism in France. He wanted to implement standard costing techniques in his company at the very same time they were conceived in the USA, around the time of the First World War. Given that this technique was to become popular in France only during the 1950s, this article seeks to understand the reasons which prevented it from being applied at Berliet's company forty years earlier. One obvious explanation is the burden of the cost accounting methods which prevailed in France until 1950. The paper also considers the hypothesis of a lack of interest, and skill by those who could have promoted this new technique, especially managers and engineers.     

置换业务

卖鱼与银行业务 我的朋友在海边长大,他的父亲经营一家鱼餐厅,餐厅的鱼是弗雷德供应的,弗雷德给多家当地餐厅供应鱼.一天,我朋友与弗雷德谈起他的生意.弗雷德问:"你一定想知道我为什么能取得成功?"     

'Nonprofits' need surplus too

By definition profit refers to the difference between revenue and expenses. In for-profit organizations profit or surplus gives a return to the owners of the company and serves as a source of financing for capital acquisitions and working capital. Nonprofit organizations, which are not allowed a surplus, don't suffer on the first count because they have no owners. But they do suffer on the second count because, if expected to grow, they need to finance asset replacement and growth. In these days when funds for long-term debt are becoming scarcer, this author asserts, the need for regulators to allow 'nonprofits' to keep a surplus is increasing. In this article, he argues for a surplus and then discusses how managers and regulators can determine how much a nonprofit organization should be allowed. He presents a combination of a modified version of the return-on-asset pricing model used in for-profit organizations and a model for assessing working capital needs associated with growth.     

The allocation of control rights in pharmaceutical alliances

This paper uses alliances in the biopharmaceutical industry to test contractual theories of the firm. I find that the allocation of control rights between pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms is sensitive to the bargaining position of both parties. Pharmaceutical firms engaging in more costly, later stage alliances tend, on average, to relinquish more rights. Additionally, biotechnology firms entering their first alliance tend, on average, to relinquish more rights. Finally, I explore if and when alliances begin to impact pharmaceutical firm shareholder value. Overall, my findings indicate the importance of considering both parties to a contract when studying contractual design.     

写好你的商业计划

要在事业上取得成功,在刚开始创业到获得收益之前,你必须要有资金,而且要有一定的流动资金.即使你已经成功了,你需要的资金将会更多.需要多少钱,什么时候要,需要根据企业的性质而定.除非你有一个很强的后盾,或者你只在一个小的家庭式的作坊里做鞋带生意,否则,融资在你整个创业阶段将是一个非常重要的内容.幸运的是,现在有许多融资渠道.如果一个不行,你可以再试另外一个.没有人说你只能用一种方式融资.例如,你可以组合10种方式来融资:储蓄、贷款、股票等等.     

管好你的碳资产

目前全球已进入节能减排的关键时期:中国政府已向国际社会郑重承诺到2020年单位国内生产总值二氧化碳排放比2005年下降40%～45%;而企业层面,碳资产管理也已悄然兴起,成为CFO必须直面的一个战略课题。随着全社会对减     

I was greedy,too

Americans are outraged at the greediness of Wall Street analysts, dot-com entrepreneurs, and, most of all, chief executive officers. How could Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski use company funds to throw his wife a million-dollar birthday bash on an Italian island? How could Enron's Ken Lay sell thousands of shares of his company's once high-flying stock just before it crashed, leaving employees with nothing? Even America's most popular domestic guru, Martha Stewart, is suspected of having her hand in the cookie jar. To some extent, our outrage may be justified, writes HBR senior editor Diane Coutu. And yet, it's easy to forget that just a couple years ago these same people were lauded as heroes. Many Americans wanted nothing more, in fact, than to emulate them, to share in their fortunes. Indeed, we spent an enormous amount of time talking and thinking about double-digit returns, IPOs, day trading, and stock options. It could easily be argued that it was public indulgence in corporate money lust that largely created the mess we're now in. It's time to take a hard look at greed, both in its general form and in its peculiarly American incarnation, says Coutu. If Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan was correct in telling Congress that "infectious greed" contaminated U.S. business, then we need to try to understand its causes--and how the average American may have contributed to it. Why did so many of us fall prey to greed? With a deep, almost reflexive trust in the free market, are Americans somehow greedier than other peoples? And as we look at the wreckage from the 1990s, can we be sure it won't happen again?     

系好外汇理财的安全带

在某外资银行工作人员长达半年的动员下,上海的张先生把十几万美元存到了该银行的个人账户上,并接受了银行为其提供的个人理财服务.该银行为张先生透支购买了3万股期限为半年的NOKIA期权.在随后的4个月里,张先生根本不知道该期权所对应的股票价格及变动情况,只是银行的工作人员不断地告诉他股价正在下跌.