Managing Risk in Reinsurance

Niels Viggo Hauter; Geoffrey  Jones

Book | 2017

Managing Risk in Reinsurance: From City Fires to Global Warming

by Niels Viggo Hauter and Geoffrey Jones

Abstract

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive history of the reinsurance industry from the nineteenth century to the present day. Reinsurance developed at the fringe of financial services and, for most of its existence, was largely unnoticed outside the expert community. However more recently public and professional sensitivity towards managing risks has increased. This book traces the global development of reinsurance and explores how the nature of risk itself has changed over time. It highlights key aspects that have shaped the evolving industry, including shifts in risk engineering and risk management, the development of actuarial science, and the impact of changes in political and regulatory contexts. The authors point to the special role reinsurers have played in the capitalist system. As the industry developed, it had a vested interest in preventing excessive risks, while also providing complex societies with a mechanism to limit the damage that natural and other catastrophes inflicted. This has led reinsurers, once a very secretive industry, to take increasingly public stances on the risk of human-induced climate change and the need to take urgent action to contain it.

Keywords: globalization; Insurance; risk management; business history; Globalization; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America; Asia;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Hauter, Niels Viggo and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Managing Risk in Reinsurance: From City Fires to Global Warming. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

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Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2018 (Revised November 2019)

John Chambers, Cisco and China: Upgrading a Golden Shield

Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

This case examines the role of Cisco led by John Chambers in facilitating web filtering in China. It begins by tracing the origins of Cisco as a pioneer of networking equipment. John Chambers, who had worked as a sales manager at IBM and Wang Laboratories, joined Cisco in 1991 and became CEO in 1995. The company expanded rapidly thereafter, acquiring many firms and growing globally, including in China, where it virtually created the internet. The case explores how the firm facilitated surveillance and monitoring of the internet under the Golden Shield project launched in 2000, and in 2004 served as a key participant in the CN2 upgrade that greatly enhanced official capability to filter content online. The case ends in 2007 with Chambers announcing further capital expenditure in China but facing growing criticism by U.S. Congress and others for Cisco's human rights record. At the same time, Cisco faced a powerful domestic competitor in China, Huawei, that had grown rapidly by investing in innovation even as Cisco pursued a share buy-back campaign after experiencing a sharp fall in its share price following the end of the Dot-com bubble. The case provides a vehicle for exploring the ethical and human rights responsibilities of corporations in the technology sector, as well as the impact of the internet on democracy.

Keywords: Cisco; Internet; Governance Controls; Ethics; Rights; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Technology Industry; China;

Citation:

Jones, Geoffrey, and Emily Grandjean. "John Chambers, Cisco and China: Upgrading a Golden Shield." Harvard Business School Case 318-158, June 2018. (Revised November 2019.) View Details

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Managing Risk in Reinsurance: From City Fires to Global Warming

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