Case | HBS Case Collection | 2002 (Revised from original 2000 version)

Holland House, The

by William J. Poorvu and Michael A. Everett-Lane

Abstract

In November 1993, Edward Geffner, executive director of Project Renewal, Inc. (PRI), is proposing that his not-for-profit firm develop Holland House at 351 West 42nd Street in New York City into a single- room occupancy hotel for homeless people. He has put together a combination of subsidy programs that he hopes will allow PRI to remodel this rundown property and provide a number of social services in a supportive setting for this underserved population.

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Welfare or Wellbeing; Construction; Poverty; Property; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry; New York (city, NY);

Format: Print

20 pages

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Citation:

Poorvu, William J., and Michael A. Everett-Lane. "Holland House, The." Harvard Business School Case 800-362, August 2002. (Revised from original April 2000 version.)

Using a novel data set on corporate ownership and control, we show that the divergence between the control rights and cash-flow rights of a borrowing firm's largest ultimate owner has a significant impact on the concentration and composition of the firm's loan syndicate. When the control-ownership divergence is large, lead arrangers form syndicates with structures that facilitate enhanced due diligence and monitoring efforts. These syndicates tend to be relatively concentrated and composed of domestic banks that are geographically close to the borrowing firms and that have lending expertise related to the industries of the borrowers. We also examine factors that influence the relation between ownership structure and syndicate structure, including lead arranger reputation, prior lending relationship, borrowing firm informational opacity, presence of multiple large owners, laws and institutions, and financial crises.

The case involves repositioning an old 6-story warehouse in Pittsburgh and many of the issues of rehabilitation and selecting and managing the development team especially in a world of capital market uncertainty. The case also demonstrates the alignment of interests of the players, the construction process, and the various methods available to contract with the general contractor including lump sum, cost-plus, and guaranteed maximum price.

This article examines the impact of the divergence between corporate insiders' control rights and cash-flow rights on firms' external finance constraints via generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation. Using a large sample of U.S. firms during the 1994-2002 period, we find that the shadow value of external funds is significantly higher for companies with a wider insider control-ownership divergence, suggesting that companies whose corporate insiders have larger excess control rights are more financially constrained. The effect of insider excess control rights on external finance constraints is more pronounced for firms with higher degrees of informational opacity and for firms with financial misreporting, and is moderated by institutional ownership. The results suggest that the agency problems associated with the control-ownership divergence can have a real impact on corporate financial and investment outcomes.

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