In February and March 2009, the US economy was in the midst of a terrifying financial and economic crisis. Between the beginning of 2008 and early 2009, four of the 25 largest U.S. financial institutions had failed, and nine of these 25 institutions had taken extraordinary steps to avoid failure -either receiving one-off government support, merging with another firm, or submitting to heightened regulation to qualify for future government support. Led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government had to quickly devise policies to stabilize the financial system and the economy. The case explores the details of policies, and the decision making process that led to them, that Geithner and his team devised under immense time pressure to stabilize the system. The case features an extended discussion of Geithner's innovative "stress test", which would reveal the longer-term health of the country's largest banks.
On the afternoon of Monday October 13, 2008, Hank Paulson Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, walked into the large conference room across the hall from his office in the Treasury Department. Joining him were Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner, Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporate Sheila Bair, and the Chief Executive Officers of nine of the largest banks in the United States. This distinguished group had been brought together by the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Financial panic was pushing the U.S. and European financial systems to the brink of failure. Paulson hoped his meeting with the bank CEOs would be a turning point. U.S. financial markets were closed for Columbus Day, and Paulson was planning to announce the latest government actions to stabilize the financial system before markets reopened on Tuesday.
Investment manager Eliza Baena confronts an apparent convertible bond arbitrage opportunity when she notices a narrowing spread between two Boston Properties (BXP) bonds, one a convertible bond and the other a straight bond, in the wake of the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy. Baena must decide if there is an opportunity, how to structure a trade to exploit it, and how much of her fund's capital to allocate. Case exposition includes descriptions of basic financing arrangements that support arbitrage strategies, such as rehypothecation and margin lending.
In June 2015 William A. Ackman, the CEO and Founder of New York Hedge Fund Pershing Square Capital, reflects on the success of the fund he has spent over a decade building. Since its inception in 2004, Pershing Square's assets under management had grown from $500 million to well over $18 billion. Ackman is now considering a sizable new portfolio position and must decide how he should raise capital to undertake this new investment. This choice is affected by the recent launch of his new, $6 billion closed-end vehicle, Pershing Square Holdings, as well as the firm's lengthening investment horizon. Although always activist in nature, Ackman and his fund had in recent years become substantively involved in the management of portfolio companies, often working to drive shareholder value by improving operating performance.
Longbow Capital Partners is a value-oriented long/short hedge fund focused on stocks in the energy sector. In January 2011, Longbow invested in NiSource, a Fortune 500 company that owns a diverse portfolio of regulated energy businesses. In late 2014, Longbow was deciding whether or not to maintain its position in NiSource. To make this decision, students must perform a discounted dividend analysis to determine the fundamental value of NiSource's stock. Students are also asked to perform a sum-of-the-parts analysis to assess the implications of NiSource's recent proposal to pursue a tax-advantaged spin-off its pipeline business.
This case describes the Dogs of the Dow investment strategy, value investing, and using dividend yields as a means to determine intrinsic value. It also describes exchange traded notes and a particular exchange traded note, known as the Dogs of the Dow, which tracks the performance of the 10 highest yielding stocks of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). The case provides share price data, dividend data, and financial statement data on the 30 DJIA companies to enable students to perform their own calculations.