Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "'This is a country where high fructose syrup has a better supply chain than fresh tomatoes, and half of our produce comes from the state of California,' said Hans Taparia, clinical assistant professor at NYU Stern School of Business, where he teaches classes on food entrepreneurship."

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Barclays has made a big step by replacing [Antony] Jenkins in the middle of his efforts to turn things around. It appears that the main reason for the change was that what he was doing was taking too long, and the markets no longer believed his efforts would change anything, not that the basic strategy was wrong. [John] McFarlane must convince the market that he can deliver strategy that will yield better results, or he too will be out. Many other global investment banks are in the same position, sticking to the old strategy while working to improve execution. But the real fault is in the strategy itself, not the execution, however slow that has been."

Excerpt from CBS News -- ""The potential for opportunities for trade and growth are significant if Iran really opens up to the world,' said Paul Wachtel of New York University's Stern School of Business. 'It is a country with oil and a well-educated labor force. A large economy like that coming back into an integrated world economic order would be really significant.'

But Wachtel said there's a major 'if' tied to that prospect. 'That integration can only happen if this nuclear deal is part of an Iranian political shift to a broader openness to the world. You need that trust factor that's still not there yet.'"

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (hereafter, DF), the most sweeping financial regulatory reform in the United States since the 1930s. DF explicitly aims to limit systemic risk, allow for the safe resolution of the largest intermediaries, submit risky nonbanks to greater scrutiny, and reform derivatives trading. How to celebrate its fifth birthday? Well, if you are like us, it will be a sober affair, reflecting serious worries about the continued vulnerability of the financial system."

Excerpt from Reuters -- "The agreement, despite its imperfections, shows that Europe will ultimately pull together, even to try to help its weakest link, said the professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business, New York University....'It's a constructive deal, positive for the euro zone, and means that for now, those tail risks that would have led to a more fundamental repricing of euro zone assets should not occur,' Roubini told Reuters in an interview in London."

Excerpt from China Daily -- "Writing in their blog moneyandbanking.com, Stephen G. Cecchetti a professor of international economics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and [Kim] Schoenholtz, noted that China's stock market is now the world's second-largest behind the US in terms of market capitalization of domestic issues...'In a large market like China's you are dependent upon the behavior of private investors. It's hard for government action to lead to stability,' Schoenholtz said. 'The success of China's stock market will depend on the government being able to tolerate volatility.'"

Excerpt from Salon -- "NYU economist Thomas Philippon finds that we now pay much more for financial middlemen than we should, despite dramatic technological advances, and that drains about $280 billion annually out of the economy. This is profit from rent seeking activity. Using a market price/earnings factor of 15.5 (a commonly used multiple that converts annual profit into market value of equity), the implied size of this financial rent-seeking business in terms of share value is more than $4 trillion, larger than the 15 largest non-financial firms in the United States and more than 15 percent of aggregate market capitalization of U.S. businesses."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- “‘Competition in a collaborative environment doesn’t work well,’ Professor Blader said. In team-based environments, it may be better to inform each employee of his or her performance individually rather than as part of a group ranking. But if a company’s culture is self focused rather than team focused, publicizing rankings may be effective, he said.”

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "In China, too, debt is the problem. 'When a bubble pops, it’s leverage that almost always proves so corrosive and destabilizing on the way down,' says Lawrence White, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business who specializes in financial regulation."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "'This makes all the sense in the world,' said Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, in a phone interview. 'Tesla is not an automobile company, it’s a luxury company.'"

Excerpt from the Financial Times -- "We live in a world that's very competitive and I think investors are often operating on very short-term horizons, especially in the US. I think that short-termism drives companies to make a lot of bad decisions. And so one of the things we've got to do is begin to take a longer-term view and get the investment community to say we're going to take longer bets on companies that basically build sustainable models that protect human rights, the environment, and also make a profit. This is about doing good and doing well."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "There have been rumors that the government is readying a much larger fund for direct stock purchases. 'The Chinese government doesn’t care about losing a few billion dollars here or there,' Mr. Whitelaw said. 'They’re trying to protect investors and maintain stability. Who wouldn’t want that?'"

Excerpt from Psychology Today -- "Researchers David Waguespack and Robert Salomon examined whether 'reputationally-privileged' athletes (that is, athletes who had been successful in previous competitions, or those from countries with a track record of athletic excellence) were more likely to succeed at the Olympic Games than lesser-known athletes. What they found is fascinating, and has implications inside and out of the sports world."

Excerpt from Barron's -- "Blame a ‘70s-era accounting rule that says companies must expense 'knowledge investments' (intangible investments like research and development) as they occur. That depresses earnings and results in shares trading at discounts. The effect was first discovered in the ‘90s by NYU’s Baruch Lev, then became the subject of greater study by Gavekal, which oversees combined assets of $1.7 billion-plus."

Excerpt from Kitco -- "I have looked into silver at the London Silver Fixing as I did for gold and the results were fairly similar, but I have also more recently started to look into the CME futures settlement prices for silver and I found several unusual patterns. I find that prices move in opposite directions from the rest of the market returns very often, particularly while silver prices were moving upwards. I also find very drastic increases in volume traded in the space of one minute, very often the largest of the day by far, and very sharp price movements."

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Greece is trying a 'tyranny of the weak' strategy: if you won’t give us better terms, we will die on your doorstep. It is unlikely to work in the long run. Despite its referendum, Greece is broke and will have to restructure. In time, Greece will have to devalue its currency to survive, most likely by leaving the euro. China, on the other hand is pursuing a 'tyranny of the strong' approach: we are powerful enough to be able to make things the way we want them. It has no more likelihood of success, however, than the Greek strategy."

Excerpt from Al Jazeera -- "The 'no' vote will be a complete disaster for Greece. It will seal - in a very negative way - the future and the fortunes of the country for a generation and that will be a total disaster."

Excerpt from CNBC -- “Historically, China's stock market has been significantly more volatile than the U.S. or other developed markets. This level of volatility is to be expected given the high-growth, high-stakes economic environment in China. … All is not yet lost. But the authorities should step back and take a deep breath. Short-term market gyrations can be frightening, but China should be playing a long-term game. There has to be an understanding that giving up some control is the only way to foster the economic future that the country deserves and the world needs.”

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "In China last week, two things I heard... First, it was the notion that the run-up in Chinese stocks was completely disconnected with general sentiment in the Chinese economy, which has been very stable, decreased in growth, but nothing that people are overtly concerned about in the near term. There's actually an enormous amount of confidence in China about the leadership and about the structural developments happening in the economy, and I saw that across the board. I saw that from elites, I saw that from party officials, I saw that from rank and file. But people in the Chinese market, the typical investors, they're not there for years or even months; they're there for weeks."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "There are very significant hurdles to an agreement: it has to be done very quickly between parties that do not trust each other; it has to be ratified by all 19 countries; and its ratification by the 19 parliaments of the eurozone countries can take weeks. ... If there is no agreement, Greece will be the first country to leave the 'club with no doors,' the eurozone. Greece may also leave the European Union, and its geopolitical position may become uncertain."

Excerpt from Inc. -- "What’s really needed, Kickul says, is a program that addresses the funding issues companies experience in their early days. 'Eighty percent of businesses fail within their first two years of existence,' Kickul says. 'It would be interesting to get Goldman to develop curriculum and address the capital gap between the startup phase and a company’s tenth or eleventh year.'"

Excerpt from Poets & Quants -- "'I loved our Statistics professor, Rohit Deo. He actually made learning about Statistics fun. He did a great job of bringing in real-life examples of how statistics are used in the sources you encounter often as a business professional, such as analysis of the numbers and statements in financial publications and dissecting the data behind survey results to better understand the validity of the conclusions. We learned the methodologies but also how to apply them. It was very practical.' – Shanise R. Anderson / New York University, Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Middle-market companies rebounded from a lackluster first quarter and grew revenues and earnings between April and June this year, according to a new report from middle-market lender Golub Capital. ... Golub helped compile the results with Edward Altman, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who noted that the results for the smaller companies portend continuing slow growth for larger public companies in the S&P 500 when they report second-quarter earnings."

Excerpt from NPR -- "In the beginning of the program, people thought, OK, we're going to get into this program. After a year, we'll be fine. We will have a one-year recession, and after a year, we will be growing. ... According to the targets, Greece would recover almost immediately in 2011, and that didn't happen. Greece did not recover in 2011, did not recover in 2012, did not recover in 2013."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "On March 17, [Jules] Kroll reeled in the city of Chicago as a client for its general obligation bonds, assigning a rating of A- and a stable outlook. Less than two months later, Moody’s slashed Chicago’s rating two notches to junk level (Ba1) after the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a plan to overhaul the state’s pension system. Fitch and Standard & Poor’s cut their ratings within three days, and each member of the Big Three set the future outlook as negative. Only Kroll had left its rating untouched, at A- and stable, as of July 2... Are those higher ratings justified? 'Kroll will say, ‘We’re better,’' says Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'That may be so, or they may be giving in to make the issuer happy. We won’t know until five years from now.'"