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Why We Need to Update Financial Reporting for the Digital Era

Harvard Business Review

The market caps of just four companies, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, now exceed $3 trillion. Their combined assets of $944 billion are an order of magnitude lower than the combined assets of $7,700 billion of the largest 3,177 companies in 1986, when the aggregate market capitalization reached $3 trillion for the first time.

Report 8
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What Private Equity Investors Think They Do for the Companies They Buy

Harvard Business Review

We also know that private equity funds have outperformed public equity markets over the last three decades , even after the fees they charge are accounted for. In particular, we are interested in how many of their responses correlate with what academic finance knows and what it teaches.

CAPM 8
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How CMOs Can Get CFOs on Their Side

Harvard Business Review

Marketing is in the midst of an ROI revolution. The arrival of advanced analytics and plentiful data have allowed marketers to demonstrate return on investment with a degree of precision that’s never been possible before. To date, however, the reality of marketing analytics has fallen short of the promise.

CFO 8
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Will You Be Writing Off Your Investment in Egypt?

Harvard Business Review

For decades multinational corporations have poured hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investments into emerging markets , sometimes preferring the investment climate of "stable" authoritarian regimes over "messy" democracies. Certainly the money at stake is substantial. Vinod K.

NPV 12
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Warren Buffett's 2010 Shareholder Letter: What to Expect

Harvard Business Review

But why compare apples (book value) to oranges (share price and dividends)? Buffett explains that book value is the best proxy for "intrinsic value," the net present value of all estimated future cash flows. Consider that since 1965, Berkshire's book value grew 434,057% and the S&P index grew only 5,430%.

Letter 14
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Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

Employees frequently attribute breakdowns to incompetence or bad faith on the part of colleagues in other departments: "Those bozos in headquarters [or finance or marketing] screw everything up." Within three years, ALL's Brazilian rail operations had increased revenues by 50% and tripled EBITDA.