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Excel model to complement a three-party negotiation exercise.

Excel model to complement a three-party negotiation exercise.

Excel model to complement a three-party negotiation exercise.

In April 2009, Wendy Jefferson had just returned to her office following a whirlwind day of meetings with her newest client, Star Advisor. Jefferson, a financial services consultant, was eager to dig into the information provided to her and her team about the Star mutual funds and the income the funds earned from securities lending. Securities lending involved temporarily transferring securities from mutual funds managed by Star Advisor to short sellers and other investors. Income from these loans had been a small but secure component of Star mutual fund returns for decades.

The purpose of this note is to describe the manner in which publicly traded corporations and local governments in the United States account for their pension plans.

The Reinsurance Negotiation case is a fictional three-party negotiation between a primary insurer and two reinsurers. The case is appropriate for use in a wide variety of courses, including Financial Institutions, Negotiations, and courses related to the Insurance and Reinsurance industry. This Teaching Note emphasizes the key learning points that are most relevant to a course on financial institutions, while also examining several key elements of negotiation strategy.

The Reinsurance Negotiation case is a fictional three-party negotiation between a primary insurer and two reinsurers. The case is appropriate for use in a wide variety of courses, including Financial Institutions, Negotiations, and courses related to the Insurance and Reinsurance industry. This Teaching Note emphasizes the key learning points that are most relevant to a course on financial institutions, while also examining several key elements of negotiation strategy.

The Reinsurance Negotiation case is a fictional three-party negotiation between a primary insurer and two reinsurers. The case is appropriate for use in a wide variety of courses, including Financial Institutions, Negotiations, and courses related to the Insurance and Reinsurance industry. This Teaching Note emphasizes the key learning points that are most relevant to a course on financial institutions, while also examining several key elements of negotiation strategy.

This note begins with an overview of reinsurance contacts - their mechanics, types and pricing. It then discusses the structure of the reinsurance industry and the impact of recent crises on this industry.

This note summarizes the four major changes affecting corporate governance that were made by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. These changes relate to: advisory notes by shareholders, refinements to board structure, non-disclosure on compensation and tightening up of certain enforcement provisions.

When the world's largest financial institutions had to be rescued from insolvency in 2008, many experts laid the blame at the feet of corporate boards. But insufficient board oversight is a problem that had supposedly been solved in 2002. As the United States reeled from the blatant failures of corporate governance at Enron and WorldCom, Congress passed the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prevent such failures from happening again. The new rules looked promising. The majority of a board's directors now had to be independent. And senior executives were required to conduct annual assessments of their internal controls for review by external auditors, whose work would be further reviewed by a quasi-governmental oversight board. By the time of the financial meltdown, most major financial institutions were SOX compliant-but that didn't stop the failures. More than 80% of collapsed banks' board members were independent, as were all members of their audit, compensation, and nominating committees. All the firms evaluated their internal controls yearly, and, in 2007, their external auditors' reports showed no material weaknesses. Neither did the reviews by the quasi-governmental board. So why were the SOX reforms so ineffective? In the author's view, it's because they merely added a new layer of legal obligations for governance without improving the quality of people serving on the boards or changing their behavioral dynamics. The author-formerly the president or chairman of two global financial firms, an independent director of several large industrial companies, and a longtime scholar of corporate governance-identifies three chronic deficiencies of boards: They tend to be too large to operate effectively. Members often lack sufficient expertise in the relevant industry. And few devote enough time to fully understand the complexities of the business. In this article, Pozen presents a new model for the corporate board.

The case involves an insurance CEO choosing between different designs for a variable annuity product in light of hedging, marketing, and pricing issues. The case provides students with background on the economics and regulation of life insurance and variable annuities. Then it asks students to calculate the returns on capital of different product designs for a variable annuity based on specified assumptions including a range of hedging scenarios.

This note will examine the regulatory framework for hedge funds in the United Kingdom (UK) before and after the financial crisis of 2008. First, it will discuss European Union (EU)-level regulation that applies to the UK as an EU member state. Second, it will discuss UK-specific regulation. Finally, this note will cover anticipated changes to regulation, both at the EU-level and within the UK, resulting from the financial crisis.

The manager of the Japan Equities Fund is faced with an increase in "hot money" moving quickly in and out of the Fund. This short term trading is an attempt to take advantage of the difference between the closing times of the Tokyo and New York Stock Exchanges. The CFO of the fund manager considers the various strategies available to limit such short term trading, which will be presented soon to the Fund's board of directors.

The Southeast Bank of Texas, like most other financial institutions in the US, has fallen on hard times during the financial crisis of the past year. Now, in March 2009, the bank is faced with several choices as a result of the new reforms spawned from the financial crisis: The FDIC's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program and the US Treasury's Capital Purchase Program. Additionally, the implementation of BASEL II has left new regulations in place for capital requirements for banks. Irwin Greff, President and CEO of the Southeast Bank, faces several decisions on how to proceed with these new policies that will surely shape the future of the bank.

Supplements to HBS no. 310-092.

In March of 2009, Lincoln Financial Group's CEO Dennis Glass was facing a difficult decision as to how he would replenish his company's capital, which could quickly fall to dangerously low levels as a result of the financial crisis. Though the cost of raising capital in the private sector was much higher than a government bailout, the latter also came with strings attached, including restrictions on executive compensation, limitations on dividends and potential damage to the company's brand among its stakeholders. Glass needed to weigh the pros and cons of private capital versus federal assistance, or somehow combine the two. This case reviews the impact of the financial crisis on the life insurance and annuity industry by analyzing the options available to Glass at Lincoln Financial.

On December 22, 2008, Bank of America (BofA) chairman and CEO Ken Lewis convened a special board of directors meeting to review his company's pending acquisition of investment bank Merrill Lynch. Negotiations for the acquisition had begun a few months earlier, during the disastrous week in September in which Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Initially both Merrill and BofA viewed their agreement favorably, but in the intervening months, as Merrill's anticipated losses ballooned and the government stepped in with such programs as the TARP, BofA found itself tied to a financial anchor with a hard-line from the government that prevented BofA from abandoning ship. This case provides background on the financial crisis and the chain of events between September and December of 2008 in which Merrill, BofA, and the government attempted to negotiate the acquisition. This case focuses class discussion on several decisions-whether BofA should have initially agreed to buy Merrill Lynch, whether it should have accepted capital contributions from the Treasury, and how it should have responded to the deterioration in Merrill Lynch's position in the first quarter.

After an incredibly volatile six months since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, Finbar McCall contemplated his options. As the investment manager of RPG Prime Reserve Fund, Inc. (RPGXX), McCall had just heard the news that the U.S. Treasury was extending the availability of insurance for eligible money market funds. When the insurance was first offered in September of 2008, RPGXX immediately applied for coverage. McCall's dilemma in February of 2009, when an extension of the Treasury insurance was offered, involved weighing the cost of the insurance against the comfort it might provide to skittish RPGXX shareholders and the increased flexibility it would allow in investing RPGXX's assets. This case provides a brief history and explanation of money market funds, the phenomenon known as "breaking the buck," and how the government's assistance changed the landscape of money market funds in the last months of 2008 and into 2009.

This note provides students with an explanation of the regulatory and tax framework for hedge funds vs. mutual funds in the U.S.