I'm the Kester and Byrnes Professor at Columbia Business School. I attempt to bring academic research and insights to questions of interest to CFOs and securities regulators. I was raised in Mumbai, India but I have spent almost all of my adult life in the United States at
What Hurdle Rate Do You Set For Capital Allocation Projects?
The CFOs I spoke to said that they worry instead about long range plans, rank ordering the best projects in terms of expected returns, ROIC and EPS growth and less about getting WACCs and hurdle rates to be precise.
What If Your Biggest Investor Is A Computer Program?
The fundamental objective of securities laws and governance arrangements in the United States is to protect the shareholder. What if your biggest shareholder is a computer program?
Accountability Related To Capital Allocation
I asked seven CFOs “Do you conduct a post-mortem of your capital allocation decisions?” Fewer than I had hoped said “yes.”
Climate Change Reporting Policy: Are We Barking Up The Wrong Tree?
A big blind spot in the climate reporting debate is the unorganized sector, households, and governments.
The SEC’s New Climate Rule Is A Reasonable Political Compromise In An Election Year
The climate reporting genie is out of the bottle although the cost of a less prescriptive SEC rule is reporting inconsistencies across jurisdictions and fully delegating materiality assessments to the firm.
A Few Decision Rules For The CFO Allocating Capital
How to decide whether to pay a dividend or pay a special or a token dividend or to invest in capex or in an acquisition or to buy back shares?
Why Don’t Corporate Monitors Notice When Key Data Items From Capital Market Datasets Vanish?
ISS stopped providing its proxy recommendations data to academics. Glass Lewis never did. No one in the governance universe seems to have noticed.
A View Of Artificial Intelligence (AI) From The Trenches
Digital transformation and cyber security ought to be bigger priorities for most companies.
Do We Need A New Performance Measurement System For Long-Term Funds?
How should we evaluate the performance of long term funds?
Tarred By The Same Brush: How Do Index Makers Deal With Corporate Governance?
MSCI ACWI ex-USA index underweights China and India. Is that a governance discount? Should investors push MSCI to aggressively weed out poorly governed stocks instead?