Suraj Srinivasan is a Professor in the Accounting and Management area at Harvard Business School. He is currently the course-head for the HBS required course Financial Reporting and Control. He also teaches to executives, Strategic Financial Analysis for Business Evaluation, and in corporate governance programs Making Corporate Boards More Effective, Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance and Compensation Committees: New Challenges, New Solutions, in the elective course Business Analysis and Valuation using Financial Statements and in HBS doctoral programs. Prior to joining HBS, Professor Srinivasan was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 2004 – 2008 where he received the Ernest R. Wish Accounting Research prize in 2007.
Professor Srinivasan’s research and case writing examines the institutions of corporate governance in the U.S. and internationally. He has studied issues such as the impact of globalization on corporate disclosure practices and compensation arrangements in international companies, the effect of securities regulation on incentives of companies to cross list in the U.S., incentives of audit firms to provide high quality audits, and reputational consequences for corporate directors when companies experience financial reporting problems. His research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, and The Accounting Review among others. He is currently the co-Department Editor for Accounting at Management Science and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Accounting Research.
Professor Srinivasan earned a bachelor's degree with honors in electrical and electronics engineering and a master's degree in physics with honors from Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences in India prior to earning an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He also received a doctorate degree in business administration from Harvard Business School in 2004 where he received the George S. Dively Award for outstanding thesis research.
How corporations govern themselves has become a matter of broad public interest in recent decades. Amid this many commentators and experts still disagree on such basic matters as the purpose of the corporation, the role of corporate boards of directors, the rights of shareholders, and the proper way to measure corporate performance. The issue of how shareholder interests should be considered in corporate decision making is particularly contentious. This article is a resource for understanding today’s key debates around governance and identifying the main areas in which changes are being called for. Many readers are grappling with these questions now or may have to address in the near future; in any case, the debates are sure to affect how business operates across the globe.
A study of how companies disclose their digital initiatives on earnings calls and written communications finds that more firms are using these technologies, that financial markets reward companies that disclose such initiatives, but that financial performance improvements are mixed. The results also show that markets tend to see execution risk in such initiatives, discounting whether management will be able to deliver on its promises when implementing technology.
The case discusses the events leading up to the massive data breach at Equifax, one of the three U.S. credit reporting companies, the organizational and governance issues that contributed to the breach, and the consequences of the breach. The case supplement provides details of how Equifax recovered from the breach and changes the company made. On September 7, 2017, Equifax announced that the personal information of over 140 million consumers had been stolen from its network in a catastrophic data breach, including people’s Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, email addresses, and credit card information. The announcement sparked a massive backlash, as consumers and public officials questioned how a company that managed sensitive personal information about over 800 million individuals could have such insufficient security measures. It came to light that Equifax had been aware of critical faults in its cybersecurity infrastructure, policies, and procedures for years but had failed to address them. Equifax’s public response also received criticism. CEO Richard Smith and numerous other executives resigned, and Equifax was left facing dozens of lawsuits, government investigations, and the potential for new regulation.
The case describes the investment of hedge fund, Totem Point Management in Analog Semiconductors (ADI) as a way to discuss forecasting and valuation in growth companies. In June 2016, hedge fund Totem Point invested in ADI at around $55 a share. In general, Totem Point aimed for their investments to yield 50% returns over a two-year time horizon. It was now 2018, and Totem Point was evaluating whether to maintain its position in ADI, expand it, or close it and walk away with its (substantial) winnings from the investment. Though the stock had done well in the prior two years, it had recently seen numerous downgrades by sell-side analysts, as its price slid 15% from a historic high. The question facing Totem Point, was whether it would grow by a further 50% over the next two years. To answer this question, Totem Point considered growth trends in each of ADI’s main end-markets: industrial applications, consumer applications, automotive applications, and telecommunications applications. If these end-markets expanded over the coming two years, ADI would do very well, but if they failed to expand, the stock would stagnate. Totem Point’s task was to figure out which scenario was most likely and what that scenario would mean for the stock’s price.
Uber Technologies Inc., the popular ride-hailing company, entered 2017 having doubled its bookings in 2016 and achieving a valuation of nearly $70 billion, making it the largest venture capital-backed company in the world. Co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick embodied the company, with a hard-charging attitude embedded in the company’s workplace culture that allowed it to successfully take on the entrenched taxi industry. Uber looked to enjoy another year of global growth in 2017, until lawsuits and a cascading series of scandals surrounding that same workplace culture led a group of powerful investors to seek Kalanick’s resignation to protect their investment. This case presents an overview of the growth of Uber, the impact of Kalanick, and the role that Uber’s board of directors had in shaping the company’s growth. It centers on the factors leading to Uber board members and investors to call for Kalanick’s resignation, focusing on how board oversight can help shape company culture and how entrepreneurial boards deal with founder CEOs. The case also deals with the recommendations of the report prepared by ex-U.S. attorney general Eric Holder on Uber’s workplace culture, and how those recommendations will, or will not, help the company, and the role that the board has in shepherding in those changes.
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