Experience Stern | News & Events

On September 19 Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel Corporation, joined Professor Michael Posner, Co-Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, for a discussion on Intel’s conflict-free initiative in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "While buying old mortgages may not seem in line with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mission of fueling new lending, it can help encourage banks to retain loans and then to find new ones, according to Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'Providing liquidity today, tomorrow, or five years from now is all part of the mission,' said White, co-author of 'Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance,' a 2011 book on their pre-crisis business."

Except from Bloomberg -- "This kind of tie-up between larger companies isn’t typical for U.S. investors, said Richard Sylla, a professor of economics and financial history at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and mutual funds tend to be more ideal investment vehicles, he said. 'It’s a bit more unusual in the U.S. for a company like Yahoo to have a big stock position in another firm without sort of taking it over,' he said. 'Usually, one firm buys another and they merge or something like that -- but in this particular case Yahoo was acting a little bit more like a partner or a venture capital firm.'"

Excerpt from USA Today -- "There’s an early warning system all investors need to know about — the Altman Z-Score — that’s is calling out six companies for being in a tough spot. The Z-Score — a financial indicator that predicts when companies are careening toward serious financial distress — is commonly used by investment professionals. And there’s no reason why individuals can’t use it, too."

Commuters in crowded subway trains may welcome targeted promotions on their mobile phones and are about twice as likely to respond by making a purchase as in non-crowded trains while in transit, say NYU Stern Professor Anindya Ghose, Co-Director of Stern’s Center for Business Analytics, and his co-authors, Michelle Andrews and Xueming Luo of Temple University and Zheng Fang of Sichuan University.

Excerpt from Fast Company Co.Exist -- "Lisa Leslie, an associate professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who has studied workplace inequalities, says the EDGE approach could be help companies be proactive about not just putting a gender equality policy in place but making sure it's effective. Often, she notes, well-meaning policies have 'backlash effects.' She gives the example of a company where none of upper management will take advantage of flexible work hours, sending the signal that lower level employees will be penalized for using them. Or a policy can even have stigmatizing effects, if, say, co-workers believe that women or minorities in leadership are promoted because of who they are, rather than their merits."

Join hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs from NYU’s student, alumni and faculty communities in Paulson Auditorium to hear about this year’s Entrepreneurs Challenge.

Excerpt from CNBC -- "I'm not getting a piece of a company,' [Damodaran] said. 'I'm getting a piece of a shell that owns a company where a politburo, basically, sets the board of directors. And if you're a trader, you really don't care. I mean, you're going to be out in six months or three months. What do you care that Jack Ma has power for life? The way I see it, traders date companies, investors marry companies. If you marry a company, you've got to be in here for the long term, and it scares the heck of me that I have absolutely no power over how this company will be run, or what can happen in the future.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The tendency of banks to rely on each other to net positions means one firm’s failure can cascade through the system. The danger that one party can’t hold up its end of the deal is known as counterparty risk. It means even if positions are netted, every trade adds risk unless it’s fully backed by collateral, said Marti Subrahmanyam, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from CCTV -- "I don't think it's a surprise, but it seems like the Fed is trying to reassure the market that nothing radical is going to happen quickly, but at the same time be firm that there is going to be a change. My feeling about this is that this change, this increase in interest rates, is going to happen faster rather than later... I would expect it to happen in the first few months of 2015, but of course people can disagree on that, and it remains to be seen."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "According to the study, commuters purchased 2.1% of the deals when the train was at two people per square meter, for example, versus 4.3% at five people per square meter. A stuffy train, the study concludes, can effectively send commuters into the hands of brands.'This was the mechanism to cope with the loss of personal space in a crowded situation,' said Anindya Ghose, co-director of Stern’s Center for Business Analytics and co-author of the paper. 'Commuters essentially escape from all of this by going to the personal mobile space.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "Here is a very thoughtful Aswath Damodaran post on the value to shareholders of corporate governance, reviewing both the theory and the evidence: 'Proponents of stronger corporate governance argue that it critical to corporate performance, but the evidence of the link between the two is not very strong.'"

Excerpt from Clear Admit -- "Hori brings more than 35 years of industry and higher education experience. At Kellogg, as assistant dean, director of career management and, most recently, associate dean of corporate partnerships, she led the team that provided career services to more than 3,000 students in Kellogg’s full-time, part-time and Executive MBA programs, as well as to 50,000 Kellogg alumni. She is credited with creating numerous programs to help increase job placement and alumni satisfaction."

Excerpt from Vox -- "The problem with shadow banking then is that while it makes the good times better, it also makes the bad times worse. In the language of economics, shadow banking imposes a negative externality on the rest of the economy. During the boom, individual institutions have little incentive to take into account the impact of their actions on the severity of the bust. Shadow banking allows them to fund riskier assets more cheaply, but doing so decreases the economy’s supply of good collateral when times get rough."

Excerpt from MarketWatch -- "'They will be experimenting with new tools. Any time you do that, there are uncertainties and there are risks. We expect them to be able to manage it, but it could be a bumpy ride,' said Kim Schoenholtz, a professor in New York University’s Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Quartz -- "'For better or worse, bankers are not feted for getting the price right but for getting it wrong, albeit in one direction and not by too much,' Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University, blogged earlier this month. A well priced IPO is one where the stock jumps 5% to 10% on the first day of trading, Damodaran wrote."

NYU Stern's Center for Global Economy and Business welcomes Jeremy Stein, former governor of the Federal Reserve Board, to speak at a public talk, entitled "Challenges for Monetary Policy."

Excerpt from PBS -- "Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and the rider is useful here. In Haidt’s telling, the mind is like an elephant (the emotions) with a rider (the intellect) on top. The rider can see and plan ahead, but the elephant is far more powerful. Sometimes the rider and the elephant work together (the ideal in classroom settings), but if they conflict, the elephant usually wins. After reading Haidt, I’ve stopped thinking of students as people who simply make choices about whether to pay attention, and started thinking of them as people trying to pay attention but having to compete with various influences, the largest of which is their own propensity towards involuntary and emotional reaction. (This is even harder for young people, the elephant so strong, the rider still a novice.)"

Excerpt from City AM -- "After analysing every Formula 1 driver in all races between 1981 and 2010, research led by Cass Business School found that individual driver performance declined in teams with two top ranking drivers. In other words, hiring too many stars can take the shine off performance."

Excerpt from Business Insider -- "Professor Damodaran is known for his genius valuations. Catch some of that insight outside the classroom."

Excerpt from Pivot -- "I can see a couple of industries being potentially threatened in the near term. I certainly think that commercial real estate is going to be increasingly threatened. There’s already been a threat stemming from the popularity of co-working, but this is definitely an important industry that hasn’t yet been affected substantially by the sharing economy in the same way that hotels have been affected by Airbnb. That’s certainly a place that I’m looking to as one that is ripe for disruption."

Excerpt from Forbes -- "'Gamification' uses characteristics like challenges, rewards, competitions, and moving to the next level based on performance skills or luck, in non-game contexts. It’s often accompanied by progress tracking metrics. The objectives are to engage users and change their behaviors in ways brands and organizations want. The extremely broad and expanding range of ways gamification has been successfully utilized in recent years provides insights into other ways the tactic can achieve strategic objectives."

Marking its 12th year, NYU Stern’s Citi Leadership & Ethics Program, supported by the Citi Foundation, has appointed NYU alumna Tensie Whelan (BA ’80) as its 2014-2015 Citi Leadership & Ethics Distinguished Fellow.

This fall, NYU Stern and NYU’s Global Spiritual Life launched the Mindfulness in Business Initiative, which aims to integrate mindfulness into the core of leadership development for Stern MBA students. 

Excerpt from Barron's -- "'The Fed can raise rates gradually, and it doesn't have to be bad for the market,' says New York University financial historian Richard Sylla."