Mary Schapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, named Owen professor Craig Lewis the SEC’s new Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation (Risk Fin) this past May. Lewis, the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management in Finance, had been working on sabbatical at the SEC since January 2010.
“I am honored that Chairman Shapiro has offered me the opportunity to lead the division and the SEC’s economists at this critical juncture,” Lewis says. “I look forward to fostering durable new analytic models that will promote efficient and effective work throughout the agency, from rule writing through enforcement.”
Lewis joined the Owen faculty in 1986 and has since been widely published on a range of financial issues. His interests and current research topics include stock and futures markets, margin adequacy, corporate earnings management, corporate financial policy, executive compensation, selective disclosure, and herd behavior by equity analysts.
“This is a great opportunity for Craig, a highly respected professor and researcher here at Vanderbilt who’s deeply admired by his students,” says Jim Bradford, Dean of the Owen School. “His appointment as Chief Economist at the SEC exemplifies a long tradition of high-caliber, real-world work that has earned the finance faculty here a place of prestige among business schools.”
Risk Fin, created by the SEC in September 2009 to help identify market risks and trends in the wake of the financial crisis, was the SEC’s first new division in 37 years. It provides sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis across the entire spectrum of SEC activities, including policymaking, rulemaking, enforcement and examinations. In addition to this role as an agency think tank, Risk Fin was created to help break down silos that compartmentalized the SEC’s institutional expertise.
Lewis’ position with the SEC is a two-year appointment. He is currently on a leave of absence from Vanderbilt.
Craig Lewis
Mary Schapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, named Owen professor Craig Lewis the SEC’s new Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation (Risk Fin) this past May. Lewis, the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management in Finance, had been working on sabbatical at the SEC since January 2010.
“I am honored that Chairman Shapiro has offered me the opportunity to lead the division and the SEC’s economists at this critical juncture,” Lewis says. “I look forward to fostering durable new analytic models that will promote efficient and effective work throughout the agency, from rule-writing through enforcement.”
Lewis joined the Owen faculty in 1986 and has since been widely published on a range of financial issues. His interests and current research topics include stock and futures markets, margin adequacy, corporate earnings management, corporate financial policy, executive compensation, selective disclosure, and herd behavior by equity analysts.
“This is a great opportunity for Craig, a highly respected professor and researcher here at Vanderbilt who’s deeply admired by his students,” says Jim Bradford, Dean of the Owen School. “His appointment as Chief Economist at the SEC exemplifies a long tradition of high-caliber, real-world work that has earned the finance faculty here a place of prestige among business schools.”
Risk Fin, created by the SEC in September 2009 to help identify market risks and trends in the wake of the financial crisis, was the SEC’s first new division in 37 years. It provides sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis across the entire spectrum of SEC activities, including policymaking, rulemaking, enforcement and examinations. In addition to this role as an agency think tank, Risk Fin was created to help break down silos that compartmentalized the SEC’s institutional expertise.
Lewis’ position with the SEC is a two-year appointment. He is currently on a leave of absence from Vanderbilt.
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
Vanderbilt’s team included Dr. Jennifer Rymer, BS’05, MBA’11, MD’11; Avery Fisher, MBA’11; and Jonathan Cook, an MBA candidate for 2012. The team received a $1,000 award for finishing third behind the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University.
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
Vanderbilt’s team included Dr. Jennifer Rymer, BS’05, MBA’11, MD’11; Avery Fisher, MBA’11; and Jonathan Cook, an MBA candidate for 2012. The team received a $1,000 award for finishing third behind the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University.
Patrick Slay, Senior Associate Director and Director of Coaching, has enjoyed two stints at the Owen School’s Career Management Center (CMC), first in 1999 and then again starting in 2008. A national certified counselor, he works primarily with consulting, general management, operations and strategy MBA students, as well as MSF students. Among his responsibilities is organizing the school’s annual mock interview day each fall.
Q: What is mock interview day? When and how did it originate?
A: It’s an annual event that started in fall 2008. The CMC saw both the need to provide job interview practice to Owen students on a large scale and the opportunity to engage Owen alumni in giving back to the school. Each student gets 45 minutes to practice interviewing with alumni, but there’s also time to network a bit and learn more about the roles they might pursue. In all, 35 to 40 alumni representing different industries and job functions come back for the event, and about half are from outside the greater Nashville area.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you give students looking to improve their interviewing skills?
A: Practice, practice, practice. No matter how good you think you are at interviews, practice is still essential for being able to walk into a room and sell yourself for a job. We remind students that the person who gets the offer is not always the most qualified, but rather the person who best articulates how he or she can do the job at hand.
Q: What have you learned from being part of mock interview day?
A: That everyone seems to enjoy it. It’s great to see the energy in the building on the day of the event. Alumni like being back, catching up with old friends and helping current students. Students appreciate the time alumni put into it and the great advice they receive. There’s not a downside to the event—except maybe it’s not held often enough!
Q: How can alumni get involved in the process?
A: We solicit help from alumni based on the information we pull from VUconnect. I always remind alumni to keep their profile updated online. If they’re interested in helping with this event or in some other way, they can always contact the CMC directly and we’ll figure out how to get them involved.
Patrick Slay, Senior Associate Director and Director of Coaching, has enjoyed two stints at the Owen School’s Career Management Center (CMC), first in 1999 and then again starting in 2008. A national certified counselor, he works primarily with consulting, general management, operations and strategy MBA students, as well as MSF students. Among his responsibilities is organizing the school’s annual mock interview day each fall.
Q: What is mock interview day? When and how did it originate?
Patrick Slay
A: It’s an annual event that started in fall 2008. The CMC saw both the need to provide job interview practice to Owen students on a large scale and the opportunity to engage Owen alumni in giving back to the school. Each student gets 45 minutes to practice interviewing with alumni, but there’s also time to network a bit and learn more about the roles they might pursue. In all, 35 to 40 alumni representing different industries and job functions come back for the event, and about half are from outside the greater Nashville area.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you give students looking to improve their interviewing skills?
A: Practice, practice, practice. No matter how good you think you are at interviews, practice is still essential for being able to walk into a room and sell yourself for a job. We remind students that the person who gets the offer is not always the most qualified, but rather the person who best articulates how he or she can do the job at hand.
Q: What have you learned from being part of mock interview day?
A: That everyone seems to enjoy it. It’s great to see the energy in the building on the day of the event. Alumni like being back, catching up with old friends and helping current students. Students appreciate the time alumni put into it and the great advice they receive. There’s not a downside to the event—except maybe it’s not held often enough!
Q: How can alumni get involved in the process?
A: We solicit help from alumni based on the information we pull from VUconnect. I always remind alumni to keep their profile updated online. If they’re interested in helping with this event or in some other way, they can always contact the CMC directly and we’ll figure out how to get them involved.
ob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management, and Jacob Sagi, the Vanderbilt
Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Finance, rang the NASDAQ OMX opening bell in New York April 19 to celebrate the start of options trading on a new group of indexes the pair developed. Called Alpha Indexes, the new tools are designed to help investors measure performance between individual stocks and benchmark exchange-traded funds.
Bob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management, and Jacob Sagi, the Vanderbilt Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Finance, rang the NASDAQ OMX opening bell in New York April 19 to celebrate the start of options trading on a new group of indexes the pair developed. Called Alpha Indexes, the new tools are designed to help investors measure performance between individual stocks and benchmark exchange-traded funds. Watch CNBC coverage of the event.
The Owen School has launched a new Master of Accountancy program that focuses on preparing students for highly sought-after careers in valuation services for international public accounting firms. The MAcc Valuation program is currently recruiting students to join the first class starting in August 2012.
Responding to an increased demand for students able to handle functions such as assessing mark-to-model values, measuring brand goodwill and pricing acquisition targets, the new program draws on some of Owen’s core academic strengths.
“The master of accountancy program itself has been a great success story, and this next step is a logical one to take,” says Dean Jim Bradford. “This innovative new course of study will address the changing world of accounting as it relates to valuing assets and risk.”
Under the guidance of Karl Hackenbrack, Associate Professor of Accounting, Faculty Director of the MAcc Program, and Associate Dean of Evaluation and Program Development, the valuation track will graduate its first class in spring 2013. The full-time program runs 12 months and includes preparation for two of three levels of the chartered financial analyst (CFA) exams, as well as the certified public accountant (CPA) exam. Students will have the opportunity to take all three tests while in the program.
“All valuation students aspire to launch their careers with an international public accounting firm in service lines that deal primarily with business modeling, transactions and audit support,” Hackenbrack says. “This program really is at the nexus of finance and accounting. To succeed in a valuation service line, the professional must understand accounting rules and the finance behind those rules.”
Successful applicants must have solid quantitative skills, but also be well-equipped to handle client-facing roles, Hackenbrack adds.
In 2010 Bloomberg Businessweek’s recruiter survey ranked Owen’s accounting program fifth among U.S. MBA programs, ahead of institutions such as Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This year’s 28-person MAcc class had a 100-percent job placement rate, in part due to the relationships formed with partner firms Deloitte, Ernst and Young, Grant Thornton, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This summer Peter Veruki, Owen’s Director of Corporate Relations, traveled to Budapest, Hungary, with his wife, alumna Judy Spinella, EMBA’93, Vice President and Project Leader at B.E. Smith. While there, they met up with several local Owen alumni at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city. Pictured from left to right are Peter Holtzer, MBA’94, Partner at Oriens Asset Management; Tibor Hejj, MBA’94, Managing Partner at Proactive Management Consulting Ltd.; Veruki; Spinella; and Gyula Hajdu, MBA’97, Regional Marketing Director, Eastern Europe, at MasterCard Europe.
Frank Bumstead, MBM’72, admits he really didn’t know what to expect when he enrolled in Vanderbilt’s Graduate School of Management in 1970, soon after finishing a tour in Vietnam as a mine warfare officer. The school, which had yet to adopt the Owen name, was young then and trying to establish its identity, much like Bumstead himself. Yet by the time the Dallas native graduated two years later, he had a strong appreciation for what the school had taught him.
“The most important thing the Owen School teaches you is how to learn,” he says. “It’s important to keep an open mind and commit to being a lifelong learner because the world changes. Two years from now, things won’t be the way they are today.”
That lesson has proven particularly valuable in Bumstead’s career. While an Owen student, he had a job with then Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn’s administration and thought that he might continue working in state government. Instead he ended up going in a very different direction: Since 1990, Bumstead has been a Principal with Flood, Bumstead, McCready & McCarthy (FBMM), a financial management firm representing clients in the music industry. Among those on the roster are country artists Keith Urban, Taylor Swift and Rascal Flatts, as well as acts like The Black Keys, Kings of Leon and Danger Mouse.
FBMM, which has offices in both Nashville and New York, is one of the few firms to offer clients what is known as tour accounting. “The money is in touring today,” Bumstead explains. “Years ago, artists toured so that they could sell records. Today they try to sell records so they can tour. Our job is to make sure that every nickel owed our clients actually gets to them and that their expenses are only the ones we and/or the clients authorized.”
Looking back on a career that has spanned 40 years, Bumstead can point to many things that have played a hand in his success, from education to effective business partnerships. Yet if he had to narrow it to one reason, he’d say it’s something he learned early on, growing up in a low-income family.
“I never felt entitled,” he says. “I always felt challenged and threatened. I felt like I had to work a little bit harder and learn a little bit more and be more attentive because I’m certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
Fraser, pictured here at Band-e Amir Lake in Afghanistan, spent five years in the country managing the World Bank’s energy program and leading donor coordination efforts for the energy sector.
When Julie Fraser arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2002, it was clear that the mission at hand would be unlike any she’d had before. The Kabul airport had been one of the primary targets of the U.S. invasion three months earlier, and the widespread destruction was evident as soon as she stepped off the plane.
“There were parts of bombed-out aircraft littering the tarmac—a fuselage here, a tail piece there—and all the windows in the airport had been blown out,” Fraser says. “We also were advised not to wander off the tarmac since the airport was heavily mined.”
At the time, Fraser was a 10-year veteran with the World Bank, an international financial organization dedicated to fighting poverty in developing countries worldwide. She was used to challenging assignments in faraway places, but the mission to Afghanistan was her first in a war-torn area. As part of the initial joint World Bank and International Monetary Fund mission to help the country rebuild, she and her colleagues operated under the tight security umbrella of the United Nations. In the early going, there were only 83 UN international staff, including Fraser, allowed in the country at any one time—because 83 was the maximum number of passengers the plane could hold if they had to be evacuated at a moment’s notice.
All risks aside, Fraser looks back with fondness on the five years she ended up spending in Afghanistan. And she feels similarly about her other assignments as well, including her current stint as Senior Financial Analyst with the Southeast Asia Sustainable Development Unit in Bangkok. Her 20-year career with the World Bank—the only employer she has had since graduating from Owen in 1991—is a testament to the pleasure she takes in her job.
“I’m proudest of my time in Afghanistan. One thing I liked about it is that I could feel the immediate effects of what we were doing.”
—Julie Fraser
Fraser attributes this long tenure to the solid finance education she received at Vanderbilt. She says it has enabled her to enjoy a variety of assignments and grow as an employee. “Some positions at the World Bank are sector-specific, like being a road engineer or an agricultural economist,” she says. “But with a finance background, you can work across a wide spectrum and have an interesting career.”
Fraser also credits her colleagues for making the World Bank such a fascinating place to work. “They are smart, intellectually curious and deeply committed to the bank’s mission—all of which makes it a stimulating environment,” she says. “They also come from all over the world. It’s not unusual to have a team dinner and for each person to be from a different country.”
Today’s World Bank, comprising the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association, is much larger in size and scope than the original institution, which was established in 1944 to assist with post-World War II reconstruction. In all, there are approximately 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide. These offices work primarily with governments to provide low-interest loans, interest-free credits and grants for investments in education, health, public administration, infrastructure, agriculture, financial and private sector development, and environmental and natural resource management.
Fraser’s earliest World Bank assignments were with the Central Transport Unit working on railway projects in China and then Pakistan. During the early ’90s, the governments of both countries were considering reforming their respective railway systems, and she had the task of creating financial models showing the benefits of introducing private sector participation. The reform movements in both countries, however, made little headway. In the case of Pakistan, then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ultimately decided to appoint an army general to run the railway instead—a disappointing result after years of effort by Fraser and her colleagues.
Such experiences are not uncommon in World Bank work, Fraser explains. Projects often can be slowed to a standstill by tangles of red tape and weak government capacity. “Dealing with the weak capacity in some of these foreign governments is probably the toughest part of my job,” she says. “Many times when you’re trying to get something done that should be relatively easy, you end up going from pillar to post.”
Fraser, however, is quick to add that a successful mission more than makes up for the frustrating moments along the way. “The best part of all,” she says, “is being able to go into the field and see the people who are benefiting from our projects.” As evidence, she points to her recent work with rural electrification in Cambodia and Laos. In the case of the latter, a project financed by the World Bank has dramatically increased Laotians’ access to electricity—from 16 percent of the population in 1995 to approximately 70 percent today.
“It’s so rewarding to go into a rural village and see families who have electricity for the first time in their lives,” she says. “They no longer have to read by kerosene, and their kids are able to study at night.”
Yet of all the missions Fraser has undertaken, she says none has been as edifying as the one to Afghanistan. The devastation caused by generations of conflict meant that the World Bank was able to have that much more of an impact upon its arrival in 2002. Even the tiniest steps of progress could be appreciated on a wide scale.
“I’m proudest of my time in Afghanistan,” she says. “One thing I liked about it is that I could feel the immediate effects of what we were doing. In other places it’s not so easy. You may not see the benefit of your work until a couple of years after the project closes.”
In Afghanistan, Fraser managed the World Bank’s energy program and led donor coordination efforts for the energy sector. Among her more memorable experiences was working closely with Ismail Khan, a former mujahedeen commander whom President Hamid Karzai appointed as Minister of Energy. Khan had made a name for himself as a fierce and sometimes ruthless leader during the war against the Soviets, and yet there he was, a conservative Muslim working shoulder-to-shoulder with Fraser—a Westerner and a woman, no less—to spur rebuilding efforts.
“There was such a strong feeling of the need for everyone to work alongside one another to get things done, and the hardships we faced together made it that more meaningful,” she says.
In a way, this observation could describe not just her mission to Afghanistan, but every one of her stops around the globe. If Fraser has learned anything from logging all of those miles, it’s that no one can tackle the toughest humanitarian problems alone.
“You come out of business school thinking that you can solve any issue, but seeing the scope of these problems can be daunting,” she says. “I guess that just makes it all the more gratifying when you can come together to bring about some good in this world.”
May 4: Thirty years after the launch of the HP 12c, it’s still common to find the calculator in heavy use among financial analysts. Alumnus James Granberry, MBA’11, a Partner with Oak Point Properties, runs a Facebook fan page for the beloved calculator and is quoted. Full story
May 23: Craig Lewis, the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management in Finance, has been named the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chief Economist and its Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation (Risk Fin). Full story
June 6: Alumna Susan Strayer, MBA’07, Senior Director, Global Employer Brand and Marketing at Marriott International, is featured prominently in this article about the challenge of attracting newcomers to around 50,000 hotel positions this year. Many of the positions are in emerging markets such as India and China, which don’t have strong traditions in the hospitality industry. Full story
The New York Times
May 31: A social enterprise called Lumni has raised $17 million to finance the education of a wide array of students in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and the U.S. in the same way startups are financed. Lumni, co-founded by Miguel Palacios, Assistant Professor of Finance, offers “human capital contracts” to people like Jairo Sneider, who grew up in a low-income, single-parent family in Colombia. Full story
Bloomberg Businessweek
May 6: Seeking an edge in the job market, Chinese women are flocking to U.S. B-schools—enough to boost female enrollment overall. John Roeder, Owen’s Director of Admissions, is quoted. Full story
May 25: Kent Thiry, Chairman and CEO of DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., is pictured speaking to the Owen School’s Class of 2011 during Commencement. Full story
Aug. 8: Larry Van Horn, Associate Professor of Management and Executive Director of Health Affairs at Owen, says it’s mathematically impossible to keep up with the ever-growing costs of Medicare and Medicaid. He says he would tax the health insurance that companies provide to employees, which he estimates could bring in $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Full story
Forbes
July 25: Owen’s Leadership Development Program, which partners with both Hogan Assessments and Korn/Ferry International, is mentioned as having some of the most innovative offerings of any business school. Full story
Sept. 26: Bruce Cooil, the Dean Samuel B. and Evelyn R. Richmond Professor of Management, is interviewed about an article he co-wrote, “Customer Loyalty Isn’t Enough. Grow Your Share of Wallet,” which appeared in the October 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review. One of the article’s other co-authors is alumnus Timothy Keiningham, MBA’89, Global Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President at Ipsos Loyalty. Full story
Fortune
Sept. 14: Facing a tough job market, underemployed graduates of professional schools have begun to speak up, some even suing their former institutions, claiming they were duped into acquiring massive debt loads based on the promise of a secure, six-figure-salary job. That promise is particularly critical at business schools, where graduates expect a quick financial payoff as well as an education. Read McNamara, MA’76, Executive Director of the Career Management Center, and Emily Anderson, Senior Associate Director of the Career Management Center and Co-chair of the MBA Career Services Council, are quoted. Full story
NPR
Aug. 15: If being invested in a wildly unpredictable stock market worries you, you’re definitely not alone. In fact, there’s an index to measure that nervousness, and even trade on it. It’s called the Market Volatility Index, or VIX, but it also goes by another name: the fear gauge. Bob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management in Finance and creator of the VIX, is quoted. Full story
CNBC
June 10: Alumnus Rob Morgan, BS’83, MBA’84, Chief Investment Strategist at Fulcrum Securities, was a guest panelist on The Call, a Wall Street news program co-hosted by Larry Kudlow and Melissa Francis. Watch video
Reuters
June 1: Fixed income trading revenue is falling, and some of the best minds on Wall Street disagree on whether this is temporary weakness or slow death. Hans Stoll, the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker Jr. Professor of Finance, is quoted. Full story
Associated Press
June 24: Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, JD’81, wants to capitalize on the city’s recent momentum with the Nashville Music Council, a 60-member group that draws together the music community, city leaders and business interests to find ways to leverage Nashville’s unique position as an all-purpose hub that’s home to more than just country music. The music council recently partnered with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, a tech business incubator run by Michael Burcham, Lecturer of Entrepreneurship. Full story
Entrepreneur
May 5: To make the best business decisions, your prefrontal cortex—the “executive” part of the brain—must be coaxed into action. Dick Daft, the Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Professor of Management, who says that the average person spends only about 2 to 10 percent of each day using the prefrontal cortex, offers several suggestions for harnessing the right frame of mind to make money and improve productivity. Full story
The Dallas Morning News
Aug. 19: Associate Professor of Management Ranga Ramanujam, whose research focuses on the organizational causes and consequences of operational failures in high-risk work settings, is interviewed about the prevalence of safety problems at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital. Full story
GreenBiz.com
June 9: AT&T wants to shift more than half of its expenditures to suppliers that track their carbon footprints and save $40 million a year by reducing energy use. The telecommunications giant revealed these and other new goals today with the release of its 2010 Sustainability Report, which was prepared using feedback the company received from students at the Owen School. Full story
Nashville Business Journal
Aug. 2: Among leadership changes including a new CEO, Cracker Barrel has appointed Jim Bradford, Dean of the Owen School, to the company’s board. Full story
The Tennessean
July 13: From January to March of this year, more than 1,800 medical, health and dental offers were published on daily deal sites in the U.S. When the deals are offered, they sell like half-price hotcakes, but some consumer experts and physicians don’t think it’s a good idea. Mark Ratchford, Assistant Professor of Marketing, is quoted.
This past spring Rachel V. Rose, MBA’05, Assistant General Counsel and Director of Business Development for BCE Healthcare Advisors, was given the task of developing a new website for her company. Unsure of where to send the requests for proposal, she sought the advice of her former professor and fellow alumnus, Bruce Lynskey, MBA’85, who used to teach entrepreneurship at the Owen School.
Lynskey recommended she talk with another Owen graduate: Jonathan Weindruch, BA’98, MBA’04, Founder and Principal at Websults, a website development firm. After Lynskey put Rose and Weindruch in contact, Websults ultimately was selected through the RFP process, and the website was completed successfully.
“Appreciating the caliber of graduates Owen produces and the faculty we were exposed to, it was reassuring to work with Jonathan, and I’m grateful that Bruce connected us,” Rose says.
Weindruch adds, “It’s always great to work with fellow Owen grads on website design and development projects. They view websites through the lens of an MBA, which in the end helps to produce better results. The shared Owen experience facilitates a great partnership and working relationship.”
Enron. WorldCom. Tyco. These are among the most notorious names associated with a wave of accounting scandals that plagued the early 2000s and ultimately helped spur passage of the 2002 accounting reform law known as Sarbanes-Oxley.
While accounting restatements haven’t gone away entirely since then—there were 735 last year, down from a peak of 1,795 in 2006, according to Audit Analytics—they don’t always result in cataclysmic failure. In fact, the market can learn much about the future fate of a company based on the buying or selling of stock by the firm and its managers preceding an accounting restatement.
Research by Nicole Thorne Jenkins suggests that insider trading that occurs before an accounting restatement can reveal a lot about a company’s future performance.
That’s according to new research from Nicole Thorne Jenkins, Associate Professor of Accounting, and co-authors Brad Badertscher of the University of Notre Dame and Paul Hribar of the University of Iowa. Their paper was published in The Accounting Review in September 2011.
“We predict and find evidence that when a firm restates its financial statements, the market uses the magnitude and direction of prior insider and corporate trades to help price the implications of the restatement,” the authors wrote.
Typically when a company issues an accounting restatement, it suffers an average loss of 10 percent in market value. That figure climbs to 20 percent or greater for firms whose restatements have been caused by “irregularities.” More than half the cases of restatements in the authors’ data occurred because of an issue with revenue recognition. Nearly 30 percent were due to things such as improperly recognizing expenses or wrongly capitalizing expenditures.
In the short run at least, Jenkins and her colleagues found that the negative impact of a restatement is softened “when there are net stock repurchases or insider purchases.” The opposite is also true—losses worsen—when “there are net equity issuances or insider selling,” they wrote.
The authors take the study a step further by demonstrating that the market is in fact using a company’s insider buying or selling behavior as a signal for how to price the restatement event. The positive (and negative) effect of buying (or selling) on share price is only found for those trades which have been disclosed publicly.
Preceding a restatement, “selling suggests more nefarious behavior on the part of management, and is likely to increase the information risk premium … while prior buying might help mitigate the uncertainty facing investors,” the authors wrote.
This study offers a “directional” hypothesis, rather than trying to determine the exact magnitude of the effect. In addition, where other research looks for reasons behind accounting restatements—fraud, for example—the authors here look only at how the market acts on public information about the buying or selling actions of management and the company.
Ultimately, the authors conclude, the evidence in this study “suggests that the market begins to look for corroborating or contradicting evidence regarding the future performance of the firm once the restatement is announced.”
Brazil’s large size presented both an opportunity and a challenge for LP Corp.
When building-products maker LP Corp. purchased a production facility in Brazil more than two years ago, it did so hoping to replicate the kind of success it was experiencing in neighboring Chile.
For nearly a decade, LP had been working to introduce its plywood-like oriented strand board (OSB) into the Chilean market—no easy task since houses there have traditionally been built with brick. Nevertheless, the country was developing rapidly, and Chile’s pro-business government was eager to assist foreign companies in creating local jobs, and in LP’s case, introducing innovative new building methods and materials.
All told, Nashville-based LP has seen its revenue attributable to Latin America grow from around $3 million a decade ago to more than $150 million in 2010, with a significant amount coming from Chile. Currently that figure represents more than a 10 percent slice of the company’s annual $1.3 billion in annual revenue.
As those gains accumulated, company CEO Rick Frost turned his gaze to Brazil, a country 10 times larger than Chile, with a youthful population expected to spark demand for as many as 14 million new homes over the next decade. That works out to a rate of about 1.4 million new houses built every year, a figure on pace with the U.S. market. “The beauty of Brazil is that we don’t have to hit a home run—just a single or even a bunt—and we’d fill the capacity of that new mill,” Frost says.
So with its Chilean playbook and new Brazilian factory in hand, the company worked for a year to understand the market and prepare alternative strategies in a country whose land mass rivals China and has some of the most populous cities in the world. But it didn’t seem appropriate simply to copy what had worked in Chile.
“To think that we could take what we learned in Chile and just transfer it to Brazil would be very naive,” Frost says. “For starters, we ran up against the sheer size difference in the two countries. Chile is much smaller, so it was easier to get things done there.” Brazil also has what Frost calls an “impermeable bureaucratic wall” that makes it hard for a foreign company—even one that had acquired a local production facility—to work its way into the construction industry like LP had done in Chile.
“We wanted to teach them—and the students—how to answer or think about the problem themselves. That’s what we do in academics.”
—Bart Victor
Around the time that Frost started to realize that LP wouldn’t be able to copy its Chilean strategy and apply it to Brazil, he happened to mention the company’s Brazil conundrum during a CEO luncheon on doing business in Latin America that was co-hosted by the Owen School’s Executive Programs and the university’s Center for Latin American Studies. The two groups quickly tapped Bart Victor, the Cal Turner Professor of Moral Leadership, who studies developing markets, as well as faculty at FIA Business School, a private offshoot of the University of Sao Paulo, with which Vanderbilt has maintained ties for more than 50 years.
For Victor and Edward Fischer, who directs the Center for Latin American Studies, LP’s Brazil challenge offered a unique opportunity to work closely with a hometown company on an element of its global strategy, while giving MBA students at a partner school the chance to gain real-world learning experience. The pair co-authored a case study based on the problems LP faced in Brazil and presented it to a class of executive MBA students at FIA in Sao Paulo.
“We made it very clear to LP that we weren’t acting as consultants who would come up with a set of precise strategy recommendations,” Victor says. “We wanted to teach them—and the students—how to answer or think about the problem themselves. That’s what we do in academics.”
Victor says the key question involved thinking through what elements of LP’s Chile strategy didn’t apply in Brazil.
“If they could answer that question, they could really start to build a stronger Brazil strategy,” he says. “Let’s think about this in a careful, thorough way. Let’s test the assumptions and unpack the logic. And yes, it mattered that we had this conversation with executive MBA students in Brazil because they know how business gets done there.”
Broken into six teams, the 40 Brazilian students studied the LP case for several weeks before returning to a daylong session with LP executives and course instructors to discuss their findings. While the students came up with some nonstarters—like a suggestion to spend millions on local advertising—much of the advice coalesced around the idea that LP not try to do too much too quickly. “They said we needed to slow down, that we needed to find ways to create market acceptance,” Frost says.
The students helped LP realize that where Chile had sought foreign investment in the country, Brazil tended to be more protective, not just of its markets, but also of its workers. Frost says those insights prompted the company, for starters, to team up with steel workers to show how its products could help save on their material costs. LP also began working more closely with the Brazilian government to help deliver on a need for subsidized housing. Frost says the country has called for 4.5 million homes to get built over three years. LP’s involvement with builders engaged in that effort allows those in the construction industry to experience the company’s products, encouraging local governments to adopt LP materials into their building codes, leading to wider acceptance in upper- and middle-tier markets.
“I don’t know if the class gave us a panacea, but it certainly gave us enough to know that what we were doing wouldn’t work,” Frost says. “It’s also nice to know that we have this kind of expertise in our backyard at Vanderbilt.”
Working through Vanderbilt’s Executive Development Institute on the Brazil project, Frost says there are no formal arrangements in place for more programs, but would welcome similar opportunities.
Says Frost, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Argentina and Colombia … .”
When Board of Trust Chairman Martha Ingram announced the trustees’ approval of a new Vanderbilt fundraising campaign in January 2001, no one could have predicted just how successful it would end up being. Thanks to the generosity of more than 200,000 donors, the Shape the Future campaign, which came to a close this past July, tallied more than $1.94 billion against a $1.75 billion goal. These sizeable numbers, however, tell just part of the story. The campaign’s success is best appreciated on a more personal scale—through the stories of individual donors, whose gifts are changing the lives of students, faculty, staff and others across campus. Here we look at several campaign gifts that will have an impact on the Owen School for many years to come.
By the Numbers
How Owen figured into the campaign
The Owen School raised more than $92 million against a campaign goal of $85 million.
The highlights include: $34 million for new endowed scholarships $20 million for programs, research, facilities and technology $17 million for new faculty chairs $12 million for unrestricted and discretionary funding, which led to the creation of innovative new offerings such as the MAcc, MSF, MM Health Care, Americas MBA and Accelerator programs $9 million for funding with pending designations
Bess Henderson’s husband, Bruce Henderson, BE’37, became a professor at Owen in 1985 after retiring from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the global management consulting firm he founded in 1963. Mrs. Henderson worked for BCG for 20 years, retiring at the same time as her husband.
FACULTY CHAIR
The Bruce D. Henderson Chair in Strategy, which Bess Henderson endowed in memory of her late husband, enables a faculty member to teach corporate strategy and conduct cutting-edge research of business practices and other essential issues facing CEOs and experienced managers.
“Bruce was devoted to Vanderbilt his entire life. He was an active alum, serving on the School of Engineering’s Committee of Visitors for a number of years. Establishing a graduate school of business at Vanderbilt resulted in long correspondence with other early advocates. It was Bruce’s belief that Owen would become one of the top-rated business schools in the country. I can think of no better way to perpetuate my husband’s legacy in the field of strategy, as well as to honor his memory, than the endowment of this chair.”—Bess Henderson
Worthy of the Name
E. Bronson Ingram chairs leave a lasting legacy
David Ingram, MBA’89, designated several significant gifts to the Owen School during the campaign, including six endowed faculty chairs named in honor of his late father, E. Bronson Ingram. Those chairs are currently held by the following faculty:
Nick Bollen, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Finance
Paul Chaney, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Accounting
Dawn Iacobucci, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Marketing
Michael Lapré, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Operations Management
David Parsley, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Economics and Finance
Steve Posavac, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Marketing
STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS
Dale Leo (left) and Wesley Murry are Founder and Principal, respectively, of Sagebrush Investment Partnership LP, a privately managed investment fund. Leo has worked in the hedge fund industry since 1999; Murry has worked in both consulting and real estate since 2001.
The Sagebrush Fund Scholarship, which was endowed by Dale Leo, MBA’05, and Wesley Murry, MBA’06, is available to one incoming first-year student each academic year. The scholarship is intended for those students who have demonstrated: (1) an interest in entering the field of finance, (2) an excellence and drive in both their careers and previous education, and (3) both the maturity and desire needed to become outstanding stewards of the school.
“Establishing the scholarship is a smart investment in the future of business education at Vanderbilt. The seed of our success was sowed within the walls of Owen, and it’s our goal to pay it forward in hopes of inspiring future business leaders and current alumni to do the same.” —Wesley Murry
“Investing in Owen is a no-brainer. It’s where the smart money goes.”—Dale Leo
Thomas Ho is President of Thomas Ho Co., a New York-based financial company that licenses portfolio and risk systems and provides professional services in risk management. He also serves as the FMRC Research Professor of Finance.
The Hans R. Stoll Scholarship, which was endowed by Thomas Ho and his wife, Mabel Chan, provides scholarship support for students whose intended MBA concentration is in finance or those who are pursuing an MSF degree. The scholarship is named in honor of Ho’s longtime friend and colleague Hans Stoll, the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker Jr. Professor of Finance and Director of the Owen School’s Financial Markets Research Center.
“Professor Stoll is a founder of modern finance who has contributed significantly to our understanding of financial markets. Moreover, he is an outstanding scholar who has dedicated himself to the pursuit of knowledge and excellence in education. Mabel and I hope that this scholarship will inspire students as Professor Stoll has inspired us all.” —Thomas Ho
STUDENT SUPPORT
Jim Sohr, BE’86, MBA’90, is the past President and Co-founder of AIM Health Care Services, which provides claims cost management services for government and commercial payers of health care benefits. Sohr is also the Co-founder of CorrectCare Solutions, a provider of health care services to correctional facilities.
The Jim and Leah Sohr Family Foundation gift supports the Entrepreneurship Center at the Owen School. The gift provides up to five $25,000 awards annually to Owen students who have developed a detailed business concept deemed viable by their peers and the center’s faculty. This financial support will allow student entrepreneurs to advance the process of building and growing their own businesses.
“Owen helped prepare me for life as an entrepreneur. What better way to give back to the school than to allow future graduates to share in the dream of becoming successful entrepreneurs themselves, who then can provide jobs and give back to their own communities. I also wanted to help Owen compete with other top-tier schools in drawing the most capable students to campus.” —Jim Sohr
Although the Shape the Future campaign has ended, the Owen School still needs funding for several key initiatives. Among the greatest needs are more endowed scholarships, improved technology and a new, larger facility that will help us compete with other leading business schools. Year in and year out, your generosity is crucial to our success, and we thank you for your continued support.
From left, Tom Janson, Paul Jardon, John Mackle and Laurencio Ronquillo in downtown Miami
The CityOwen program is led by alumni around the country and provides value through networking opportunities, updates on the school and featured faculty or staff presentations. The program also helps strengthen the relationship between Owen and local communities in areas such as recruitment.
Birmingham: Sept. 8
C.T. Fitzpatrick, MBA’90, hosted an event at the offices of Vulcan Value Partners. David Owens, Professor of the Practice of Management and Innovation, spoke.
Boston: Oct. 4
Tim Clark, MBA’97; Frank Kimball, MBA’86; Van Simmons, BE’82, MBA’86; Kurt Volk, MBA’99; David Walker, MBA’89; and Derek Young, MBA’91, hosted the inaugural CityOwen Boston event at the Harvard Club.
Knoxville: Oct. 27
The inaugural CityOwen Knoxville event was held at the offices of Bush Brothers & Co.
Memphis: Sept. 14
Thomas Hussey, MBA’98, and Kevin Kimery, MBA’93, hosted an event at the Memphis Hunt and Polo Club.
New York: Oct. 12
Brian Appleton, MBA’02; Andrew Bogle, MBA’04; Shannon McDonald, MBA’04; and John Roberts, MBA’83, hosted the Wall Street Week Reception at the Union League Club.
South Florida: Oct. 18
Tom Janson, EMBA’02; Paul Jardon, IEMBA’99; John Mackle, IEMBA’99; and Laurencio Ronquillo, MBA’03, hosted the inaugural CityOwen South Florida event at Fadó Irish Pub in Miami.
If you are interested in starting a CityOwen group where you live, please contact Alumni Relations at (615) 322-7409.
The Global Business Association (GBA) and Japanese Business Club (JBC) joined efforts last October to send 34 students, Dean Jim Bradford and David Parsley, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor in Economics and Finance, on an excursion through Japan as part of the GBA’s third annual fall break trip. The purpose of these trips is to educate the Owen community about global business through internationally focused academic and cultural activities. In our case, we learned about Japan’s economy, primary industries, culture and business customs.
Taking 36 people through four cities over an eight-day period can be a daunting task, but my fellow organizers and I were up for the challenge. Amrita Dutta-Gupta, BA’03, Dwyla Beard and I helped coordinate the trip for the GBA. The JBC organizers were Toshinao Endo, Hiromasa Shimomoto and Hideaki Suga. All six of us are in the MBA Class of 2011.
“One of the most educational and fun aspects of organizing the Japan trip was working with the Japanese Business Club,” says Dutta-Gupta, who serves as President of the GBA. “Through the planning process, which included weekly meetings and innumerable emails over six months, we were able to form stronger friendships, which will endure beyond our experience at Owen.”
TRAVELOGUE
Preparations
Prior to the trip, all participants were provided an overview of the business and cultural customs of Japan. Heiki Miki, MBA’96, Section Manager of Line Pipe Export at JFE Steel and a member of Owen’s Alumni Board, educated participants about common language terms and proper business etiquette.
The GBA group with alumnus Tadaaki Yamaguchi at JFE Steel in Tokyo
Day 1: Tokyo
The first company we visited was Microsoft, where we learned about the customization and localization of its products for the Japanese market. In the afternoon we traveled to JFE Steel. Tadaaki Yamaguchi, MBA’02, provided us with direct exposure to the entire steel manufacturing process, including raw materials procurement, the creation of pig iron in a 2,192-degree blast furnace, and the final rolling of high-performance steel sheets.
An evening with the maiko in Kyoto
Day 2: Tokyo
We toured several Tokyo sites, including the Meiji Jingu shrine, the Imperial Palace, the Asakusa Kannon temple and the Nakamise shopping arcade. That evening we participated in an izakaya party. An izakaya is a drinking establishment that offers a variety of small dishes, which are shared by all at the table.
Day 3: Kyoto
We traveled to Kyoto via bullet train (Shinkansen), which can go upwards of 187 mph. Upon arrival we visited the Kinkaku-ji and Kiyomizu-dera temples. We also viewed a kimono fashion show at the Nishijin Textile Center, which had beautiful silk textiles on display. In the evening a few of us experienced traditional Japanese entertainment performed by geisha (called maiko in Kyoto), ate delicious local cuisine and played drinking games while in the maiko’s company.
The Genbaku Dome, now part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, was one of the few buildings left standing after the atomic explosion in 1945.
Day 4: Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Hiroshima
While half the group stayed in Kyoto or ventured to nearby Osaka and Kobe, the other half took the bullet train to Hiroshima. I opted for the latter, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. We toured the city with two atomic bomb survivors who have learned English in their old age to tell their stories of what happened on Aug. 6, 1945, and in the months that followed. This spurred a thought-provoking discussion about World War II among our group.
Following Hiroshima, we ferried to an island called Miyajima to see the Itsukushima shrine and its famous torii, or gate. One of the unique things about the island is that its wild deer are accustomed to people and wander around the tourist sites. At one point we literally walked side by side with a baby fawn and its mother. The experience was quite serene—the perfect epilogue to Hiroshima.
Kelly Leo with Dean Bradford and Keith Whitman in Hakone
Day 5: Kyoto, Kameyama and Hakone
This was the busiest day of the trip. Before departing Kyoto we visited Gekkeikan, the largest sake producer in the world, and learned about its manufacturing process. Elizabeth Childs, an MBA candidate for 2011, says, “The highlight for me was being able to stand on top of a silo holding 111,000 gallons of sake. That was incredible!”
In the afternoon we headed to the Sharp Electronics factory in Kameyama, where impressive LCD, 3-D and Quattron technology was on display. Sharp also impressed us with its CSR (corporate social responsibility), highlighting the use of solar panels to provide energy to both the factory and the adjacent town.
We finished the day in Hakone, where the highlights were participating in a traditional enkai (Japanese-style banquet), visiting an onsen (natural hot springs) and singing karaoke with Dean Bradford!
Day 6: Gotemba and Tokyo
Leaving Hakone, we visited Terumo, a prestigious medical device company in Gotemba. The company’s facilities serve not only as corporate headquarters but also as a research-and-development and training center, which includes a mock hospital. Shigeru Aono, MBA’05, who is Manager of the Oncology Business Unit at Novartis Pharma K.K., joined the group for a tour of this impressive facility.
After a long day of travel, most of the group spent the evening navigating the Tokyo subway system to find last-minute souvenirs or catch a glimpse of the night skyline from the Toyko Tower. I opted for a neon-filled stroll with my husband, Keith Whitman, BS’03, a fellow MBA candidate for 2011. We walked through the Akihabara neighborhood, popularly known as “Electric Town,” where most of Tokyo’s young go to play video games or shop for the newest electronics.
Day 7: Tokyo
Bright and early at 4:45 a.m., the group traveled via taxi to the Tsukiji Market, one of the largest fish markets in the world, where we witnessed a live tuna auction. Flash-frozen tuna from the prior day were sold for $5,000–$30,000 each and distributed to local restaurants and markets worldwide.
From left, MBA candidates Stephanie Kaye Ramirez, Amrita Dutta-Gupta, Kimberly “KJ” Johns and Cindy Yeo at the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo
Smelling like fish, we then headed to Kirin Beverage Co., where Yuichi Yamada, MBA’07, and Tomoaki Asanuma, MBA’07, provided an in-depth presentation about the soft drink, bottled water, juice and tea market in Japan, where Kirin is the market leader. Their presentation would have made Owen’s marketing and strategy faculty quite proud.
We finished the day by traveling to Nissan’s headquarters, where we received an overview of its new electric car, the LEAF, and a private showing of all the vehicles on the floor. Later that evening, Dean Bradford hosted an alumni dinner with help from Kazuaki Osumi, MBA’05. All of the trip participants and alumni in the area were invited. The 15 alumni who attended said they longed to visit Nashville and Owen again. We hope they can make it back soon!
Day 8: Tokyo
On our final day, we visited SECOM, a pioneer in Japan’s security services market. Hideki Hirazawa, MBA’00, Director of the IT/Health Care Division at SECOM, and his team discussed what they are doing in the health care space and spoke about the various health care challenges in Japan. It was quite a relevant and fascinating presentation given the current debate over health care reform in the United States. After leaving SECOM, we then toured the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where we learned about its modernization, trading trends, main players and derivatives market.
From left, MBA candidates Toshinao Endo, Hideaki Suga and Hiromasa Shimomoto at the Tokyo Stock Exchange
We are extremely grateful for the insight, assistance, dedication and translating abilities of the three aforementioned JBC organizers (Endo, Shimomoto and Suga) who worked tirelessly throughout the eight days to ensure an educational, welcoming and never-to-be-forgotten experience.
Additionally, this trip would not have been possible without the efforts of our alumni. “They were extremely excited about our visit to Japan,” Dwyla Beard says, “and they supported us by opening the doors of their companies for our visits. Although Vanderbilt is located in the U.S., the Japanese alumni reminded me that Owen alumni are exhibiting leadership all over the world.”
Arigato gozaimasu, Japan!
Kelly Leo, BS’03, is an MBA candidate for 2011 and the Vice President of Owen Bridges within the Global Business Association. Owen Bridges helps international students acclimate to Owen and the Nashville community through one-on-one mentorships and group activities.
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
uiting students to join the first class starting in August 2012.
This summer Peter Veruki, Owen’s Director of Corporate Relations, traveled to Budapest, Hungary, with his wife, alumna Judy Spinella, EMBA’93, Vice President and Project Leader at B.E. Smith. While there, they met up with several local Owen alumni at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city. Pictured from left to right are Peter Holtzer, MBA’94, Partner at Oriens Asset Management; Tibor Hejj, MBA’94, Managing Partner at Proactive Management Consulting Ltd.; Veruki; Spinella; and Gyula Hajdu, MBA’97, Regional Marketing Director, Eastern Europe, at MasterCard Europe.
