Pete Carvey, CFO for the PKO Resources of McKinney, TX sat at his desk puzzling over the analysis just presented to him regarding an acquisition his firm was considering. Although this project seemed like hundreds of others that he had analyzed, Pete was bothered by three things: First, the...

James Kingsley, a financial analyst for Progressive Exploration and Development Company, has been asked to join a team that will analyze the possible acquisition of a sizable oil field in southeastern Oklahoma. To prepare for the task Mr. Kingsley constructs a spreadsheet model of the economic...

In this paper, we develop and test a model of optimal incentive compensation that incorporates consideration for the role of both competition and cooperation among the firm's top executives. Our model highlights the effects of firm risk on the relative importance of cooperative versus...

We examine Enron's collapse to provide insights as to the efficacy of recent governance reforms. In doing so, we explore two main issues. First, if recently mandated governance changes had been in place earlier, would they have constrained actions by Enron's management? Second, and more...

We examine the potential expropriation of a firm's intellectual capital that results from joint venture agreements when a firm's joint venture partner becomes the target of an acquisition attempt. We find that: (1) non-targeted joint venture partners often suffer losses in value upon the...

SUBJECT AREAS: Business Valuation, Financial Forecasting, Strategic Analysis.CASE SETTING: 1996, U.S.In the Spring of 1996 Berg Electronics is poised to become a publicly traded company after going through a quot;build-upquot; leveraged buyout by Hicks, Muse, Tate, and Furst (HMTF). HMTF...

We provide a clinical perspective on corporate governance, shareholder activism and corporate restructuring by studying Sears, Roebuck amp; Co. In particular we focus on Sears' diversification into financial services during the 1980's, the poor performance that followed, and the ensuing...

Partner firms to the same joint venture experience sharply different stock price reactions, controlling for differences in size and ownership share in the project. These differences are not explained by different roles in the project or differences in investor anticipation of the annoucement....

The typical payday loan is for less than $500, has a maturity of two weeks, is secured by the borrower's post-dated check or debit authorization, and carries a compound annual rate of interest that can easily exceed 10,000 percent. If you imagined the terms of illegal loan sharking you may not...

In this paper, we lay out theoretical shortcomings of the IRR criteria that have largely dropped out of the finance literature. We discuss the problem of multiple IRRs and non-existent IRR under a new light. We also discuss the financial ambiguity that can arise when interpreting the IRR. Then,...