The case highlights deliberations led by Brett Barakett, CEO and chief investment officer of Tremblant Capital, just months prior to launching an actively managed ETF, Tremblant Global (TOGA). However, his team continued to have reservations around the launch. On the one hand, TOGA would provide investors compelled by Tremblant's investment philosophy a more tax-efficient, liquid, and transparent product, at a lower cost than its long-only fund. On the other hand, there were concerns that TOGA might cannibalize Tremblant's higher-fee hedge fund business, increase its disclosure requirements, and expose the firm to greater counterparty risk.
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth equity-investing in small, publicly traded companies with outsized growth potential. But with its successful, domestic small company fund closed to new investors since 2013, and its international small company fund on a similar trajectory, Brown Capital's pathway to sustained growth is unclear. Should it (1) reconsider closing its Morningstar 5-star rated international small company fund; (2) focus on its newer mid company fund, which has more capacity for growth and a recent uptick in performance; or (3) introduce new strategies and asset classes?
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund's portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like a global pandemic. Bill Ackman had become increasingly concerned about the hedge fund's exposure to a novel, highly infections, and lethal coronavirus that was spreading across the globe. Ackman and his team needed to decide whether this was a risk worth hedging, and if so, which hedging instruments would best balance risk mitigation, explicit costs (fees and premia), opportunity costs, and the long-run objectives of the fund. Ackman and his team considered fully liquidating their portfolio, as well as hedging it with futures, options, and credit default swaps. For each alternative, they also needed to determine the optimal size and maturity of the hedging position, after accounting for uncertainty over the trajectory of the virus. This case provides students with ample opportunities to analyze and understand tail risk and how to manage it in practice, including explicit calculations of position sizing, costs, risks, and benefits of hedging alternatives.
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund's portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like a global pandemic. Bill Ackman had become increasingly concerned about the hedge fund's exposure to a novel, highly infections, and lethal coronavirus that was spreading across the globe. Ackman and his team needed to decide whether this was a risk worth hedging, and if so, which hedging instruments would best balance risk mitigation, explicit costs (fees and premia), opportunity costs, and the long-run objectives of the fund. Ackman and his team considered fully liquidating their portfolio, as well as hedging it with futures, options, and credit default swaps. For each alternative, they also needed to determine the optimal size and maturity of the hedging position, after accounting for uncertainty over the trajectory of the virus. This case provides students with ample opportunities to analyze and understand tail risk and how to manage it in practice, including explicit calculations of position sizing, costs, risks, and benefits of hedging alternatives.
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund's portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like a global pandemic. Bill Ackman had become increasingly concerned about the hedge fund's exposure to a novel, highly infections, and lethal coronavirus that was spreading across the globe. Ackman and his team needed to decide whether this was a risk worth hedging, and if so, which hedging instruments would best balance risk mitigation, explicit costs (fees and premia), opportunity costs, and the long-run objectives of the fund. Ackman and his team considered fully liquidating their portfolio, as well as hedging it with futures, options, and credit default swaps. For each alternative, they also needed to determine the optimal size and maturity of the hedging position, after accounting for uncertainty over the trajectory of the virus. This case provides students with ample opportunities to analyze and understand tail risk and how to manage it in practice, including explicit calculations of position sizing, costs, risks, and benefits of hedging alternatives.
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund's portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like a global pandemic. Bill Ackman had become increasingly concerned about the hedge fund's exposure to a novel, highly infectious, and lethal coronavirus that was spreading across the globe. Ackman and his team needed to decide whether this was a risk worth hedging, and if so, which hedging instruments would best balance risk mitigation, explicit costs (fees and premia), opportunity costs, and the long-run objectives of the fund. Ackman and his team considered fully liquidating their portfolio, as well as hedging it with futures, options, and credit default swaps. For each alternative, they also needed to determine the optimal size and maturity of the hedging position, after accounting for uncertainty over the trajectory of the virus. This case provides students with ample opportunities to analyze and understand tail risk and how to manage it in practice, including explicit calculations of position sizing, costs, risks, and benefits of hedging alternatives.
This case examines modern endowment investment management through the lens of a leadership transition between Chief Investment Officers (CIOs). In March 2021, Paula Volent is about to step down as the CIO of the endowment of Bowdoin College after twenty-one years, and is preparing to meet with her successor, Niles Bryant, to plan for the transition. Under Volent's leadership, the endowment has grown from about $433 million to almost $1.8 billion while providing the college a consistent annual payout of between 4% and 5% of the value of the endowment to fund its operations. While returns have been exceptional under Volent's leadership (as compared for example to most other college and university endowments), she is acutely aware of the challenges ahead driven by capital markets conditions, including the persistently low level of real and nominal interest rates relative to history, high equity valuations, and the flow of assets into alternative asset classes. At the same time, colleges such as Bowdoin have become increasingly reliant on endowments in order to be able to offer admission to the best students, regardless of their financial situation, as well as compensation and research budgets to attract the best faculty in a highly competitive environment. Without the support of a growing endowment, this cost inflation would require significant tuition increases and quite possibly cuts to financial aid. The case offers students ample opportunities to examine the link between the financial needs of an investor ("liabilities") and its assets, and to analyze how this translates into effective investment risk management, liquidity management, return targets and the tradeoff between risk and return, and portfolio structuring decisions. The case also provides opportunities to examine performance evaluation as well as strategies for manager selection in an actively managed portfolio.
By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated-$21 trillion of institutionally managed money now gave some consideration to sustainability. This case considers the two important questions surrounding a potential divestment: 1) Should the University alter its endowment's portfolio to meet broader social objectives, and 2) If so, how should it integrate climate objectives, or ESG considerations more generally, into its investment strategy and portfolio construction? In the case, the University is being advised on these questions by Nicole Abramson, an investment management professional specializing in ESG products. To formulate her recommendation, Abramson considers the views of Harvard's stakeholders and the sustainability best practices of institutional investors and asset managers around the world.
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 technology platform that has been severely impacted by the cancellation of events in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic. These would be one of the first investments the recently raised Francisco Partners Credit Opportunity Fund ("FP Credit") would make. The case provide students with opportunities to explore private debt markets, the structure, strategy, and management of private credit funds, the evolution of credit and private credit in recent years, the structure and pricing of private credit agreements, the risk and return of private credit as an investment, and the analysis of a specific investing opportunity in this area.
In April 2020, global financial markets were still reeling as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world. Global equity markets had initially fallen by 30% in response to the pandemic, and high-yield credit markets had dropped by nearly 20%. In contrast, U.S. Treasury markets were up 20% year-to-date (YTD). Interestingly, the U.S. Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) market had been much less responsive to the health crisis, exhibiting very low volatility throughout this period and returning about 2% YTD. Maya Russell, head of asset allocation research at a large global institutional investor, must make a recommendation on whether her fund's board should invest in MBS, and if so, whether this is a good time for the fund to implement the allocation and whether it should do so pursuing an active or a passive investment approach. This case covers a wide range of topics in fixed-income investing, including duration and interest rate risk, prepayment risk, mortgage securitization, and the design of mortgage-backed securities. These concepts are analyzed from the perspectives of both individual and professional investors in fixed-income and mortgage markets.
Karl Jan Erick Hummel had founded Paradigm Capital Value Fund in 2007 together with Columbia Business School Professor Bruce Greenwald, an expert in value investing and now chairman of the fund. The fund followed the principles of value investing to their target universe: publicly traded companies with market capitalization between €100 million and €4.5 billion based in Germany, the Nordic countries, the U.K., and Ireland. Hummel and Greenwald believed they had developed an investing edge in that universe, ignored by large U.S. and U.K. based funds, through deep research and by locating their headquarters close to companies and their management. Hummel and his team of six analysts were based in a small suburb of Munich, Germany. Paradigm Capital Value Fund was highly concentrated, with 60% of its assets invested in four stocks, and held its positions for long periods of time. Hummel had to decide if it was time to divest from one of their main investments, a German manufacturer of roll-over car washing systems, and instead invest in a German truck equipment supplier. At the same time, Hummel was concerned by how to grow the fund.