What makes a great manager? What are the components that go to make a great leader? Academics at business schools around the globe have expended great effort in trying to answer these questions. A recent case study undertaken at Harvard Business School looks at the most successful football manager in history - Sir Alex Ferguson. Much as it pains me to admit this, but Ferguson is a great manager. You can read what the HBS case study found here. Ferguson also gave a class at HBS, which was apparently very compelling (click here). Thankfully none of the MBA students received the infamous 'hairdryer' treatment from Fergie! My hope is that there will be a similar HBS case study on Brendan Rogers in 2038. I can but dream!
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...