Harvard Business Review

MARCH 25, 2013

Insolvency is usually a balance sheet concept based around the valuation of assets. When the value of your assets is less than the value of your liabilities, you are insolvent. Technically almost every country would be insolvent if if was asked to pay all of its debt using its available assets.

Balance Sheet 19

Balance Sheet Banking Assets Government 19

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

For example, at the end of its 2015 fiscal year, Apple’s balance sheet stated tangible assets of $290 billion as a contribution to its annual revenues, with approximately $141 billion worth of intangible assets — a combination of intellectual capital, brand equity, and (investor and consumer) goodwill.

Balance Sheet 14

Balance Sheet Assets Insurance Operations 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 5, 2014

LPs pay VCs like asset managers, not investors. This fixed 2% fee structure creates the incentive to accumulate and manage more assets. In fact, many VCs don’t even invest in their fund from their personal assets, instead contributing their investment via their share of the management fees. Well, it depends.

Compensation 22

Compensation Assets Balance Sheet Marketing 22

Harvard Business Review

JULY 13, 2015

You take your company’s total liabilities (what it owes others) and divide it by equity (this is the company’s book value or its assets minus its liabilities). Both of these numbers come from your company’s balance sheet. So you want to strike a balance that’s appropriate for your industry.

Accounts Payable 15

Accounts Payable Balance Sheet Cash Flow Accounts 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

To know whether a company is truly on the cusp of hitting a $0 balance in their accounts, you can’t simply look at the income statement. The current ratio measures a firm’s ability to pay off its short-term liabilities with its current assets. One of the biggest fears of a small business owner is running out of cash.

Accounts Payable 15

Accounts Payable Assets Balance Sheet Accounts 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 4, 2011

Shouldn't all shoppers receive customized shopping recommendations, based on past behavior, integrated with their online accounts and delivered to their mobile devices? Doing this right will allow the CFO to keep the store as an asset on the balance sheet, not a liability — a move shareholders would surely reward.

Balance Sheet 15

Balance Sheet eCommerce Media Assets 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 9, 2015

Finance & Accounting Tool. Income statements almost always include an allowance for depreciation of capital assets. You might also find that your accounts receivable (A/R) — what customers owe you for services rendered or products delivered — rises by $1 million. You have to account for the time value of money.

ROI 15

ROI Cash Flow Revenue Balance Sheet 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

In the 2016 book The End of Accounting , NYU Stern Professor Baruch Lev claimed that over the last 100 years or so, financial reports have become less useful in capital market decisions. Recent research lets us make an even bolder claim: accounting earnings are practically irrelevant for digital companies.

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Assets Revenue Accounts 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 11, 2013

First, get a copy of your prospective employer's balance sheet. Once you get the balance sheet, calculate what accountants call the current ratio. Just take "current assets" (on the Assets side of the balance sheet) and divide it by "current liabilities" (on the Liabilities side).

Balance Sheet 9

Balance Sheet Assets Accounts 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

Banks have developed fortress balance sheets, improving credit quality by 54 percent, increasing net income and, restoring aggregate lending to pre-crisis levels of nearly $7 trillion. A lot of investors seem to get this — which helps explain why Vanguard has grown to account for 17% of mutual fund assets in the U.S.,

Balance Sheet 16

Balance Sheet Banking Insurance Compensation 16

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 14, 2016

But this new report, by estimating the risk to all financial assets and portfolios, finds a powerful middle ground that should get investor attention. These so-called “stranded assets,” sitting on petro-company balance sheets, are essentially worthless. And thus those companies are massively overvalued.

Assets 14

Assets Balance Sheet Real Estate Energy 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 11, 2013

But after hearing Fastow speak twice to my Financial Statement Accounting class and reviewing independent evidence, I think I have good idea. The company also had three divisions — Water, International, and Merchant Investment — that were saddled with underperforming and over-valued assets. He didn''t say which decisions.

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Assets Cash Flow Energy 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 14, 2017

Once a transaction is entered in the database and the accounts are updated, the records cannot be altered, because they’re linked to every transaction record that came before them (hence the term “chain”). First, blockchain could help relieve a large balance-sheet liability that many in the industry are facing.

Travel 15

Travel Balance Sheet Banking Revenue 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 11, 2011

To us, what's important is the beginning of a capability to measure non-financial value on a par with supposedly "hard" measures provided by our National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), the system the US uses to classify an report on economic output. What is seldom mentioned is that our economic statistics contain plenty of subjectivity.

Balance Sheet 16

Balance Sheet Benchmarking Advertising Assets 16

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 25, 2013

Insolvency is usually a balance sheet concept based around the valuation of assets. When the value of your assets is less than the value of your liabilities, you are insolvent. Technically almost every country would be insolvent if if was asked to pay all of its debt using its available assets.

Balance Sheet 12

Balance Sheet Banking Assets Government 12

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 24, 2012

While in everyday language, it is plain enough that poor-quality data are liabilities and high-quality data are assets, they don't appear on the balance sheet. Doug Laney, of Gartner, and others are building a body of practice that supplements today's accounting methods to help address this shortcoming.

Balance Sheet 15

Balance Sheet Operations Assets Revenue 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 12, 2017

While the large banks are at the center of this trust vacuum — with a seemingly steady stream of scandals, such as the recent Wells Fargo account rigging debacle — the erosion of trust is bad for everyone.

Insurance 15

Insurance Balance Sheet Assets Revenue 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 31, 2015

Home Depot ’s hack, compromised 65 million customer credit and debit card accounts. bank in assets, JP Morgan Chase , announced that in August, hackers had accessed its security system and that approximately seven million small businesses and 76 million households had been affected by a data breach.

Balance Sheet 13

Balance Sheet Cash Flow Banking Assets 13

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 9, 2015

The US economy is in cyclical full-steam-ahead mode, but it’s mainly benefitting the owners of financial assets – wage growth is missing. Interest rates of zero meant that central banks took to targeting asset prices – stocks and bonds – to boost spending. We need new policies. This policy is also fairer.

Banking 12

Banking Assets Government Balance Sheet 12

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 31, 2017

That strengthened investment banks’ balance sheets by forcing them to scale back and to change the nature of the risks they take. As a result, their balance sheets are half as large on a risk-adjusted basis, and the capital they hold against trading positions has doubled over the past decade, our research shows.

Banking 8

Banking Balance Sheet Assets Compliance 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

For instance, before the crisis, the three largest German banks had two-thirds of their total assets in foreign markets; today it is only one-third. According to Dealogic, banks have divested more than $2 trillion in assets since 2007. Their share of total foreign investment assets has risen from 8% to 14% over the past ten years.

Banking 8

Banking Assets Balance Sheet Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Financially, organizations require new models to account for information assets beyond treating them as intangibles. The ultimate goal is to treat information as a tangible flow rather than an intangible asset stuck on the balance sheet. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Balance Sheet 10

Balance Sheet Assets Diversity Operations 10

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 1, 2018

Most major producers with large balance sheets will likely hedge their bets and attempt both. Electric vehicles will only account for 7% of the cars on the road over the next 12 years, Morgan Stanley estimated when oil prices were relatively low in May in a report titled “One Billion BEVS by 2050.”

Cash Flow 15

Cash Flow Transportation Balance Sheet Energy 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Failure to present a groundbreaking new vision risks leaving in place old economic drivers, especially the over-reliance on fixed-asset investment, that have created serious challenges such as China’s “ghost cities” and high levels of local government debt. If the party leaders do tackle these reforms, success is far from assured.

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Government Revenue Sales 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2012

The first whistleblower — using facts — is former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford , who uncovered a huge accounting fraud at the company. Then accounting changes forced them to cover up the losses in a different way. These funds were used to fill the balance sheet hole caused by the prior derivative losses.

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Government Accounts Assets 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 30, 2017

As my colleague Peter Cappelli recently argued , automation technologies are profitable, in part, because they are considered an asset on a firm’s balance sheet that can be depreciated. Might executives be more willing to make such investments if they received more-favorable treatment in our accounting and taxation policy?

Marketing 12

Marketing Balance Sheet Compensation Benefits 12

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Financially, organizations require new models to account for information assets beyond treating them as intangibles. The ultimate goal is to treat information as a tangible flow rather than an intangible asset stuck on the balance sheet. “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Assets Diversity Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 14, 2017

M is Mass, in this case all the things, people, and assets of your ecosystem. In a traditional business, there is little connectivity or co-creation, so the enterprise value is equal to the “mass” of the company — its human resources, financial assets, intellectual property, and physical goods. Intellectual capital.

Assets 8

Assets Software Balance Sheet Human Resources 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 14, 2014

It shifted debt from the private side of the country’s balance sheet to the public side. While households have been trimming down their debt, the value of people’s savings, investments, and retirement accounts has recovered from the recessionary low. As that happens, the trade deficit will fall. Abundant Capital.

Balance Sheet 8

Balance Sheet Energy Biotech Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 7, 2012

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet shows that, since 2008, "deposits by depository institutions" (i.e. quantitative easing (QE) flooded the banks with money that, as noted above, they've kept in their accounts with the Fed rather than lending out. The power of this "pushing on a string" metaphor is especially apparent today.

Banking 16

Banking Balance Sheet Government Assets 16

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2011

Interestingly, intangible assets are all the rage these days on Wall Street. Interestingly, intangible assets are all the rage these days on Wall Street. There is no line on the balance sheet for "ability to innovate" or "skill at managing brand." If you can't measure it, how can you manage it?

Assets 16

Assets Balance Sheet Reorganization Organizational Change 16

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 2, 2016

The strategy works, temporarily putting more cash on the positive side of the balance sheet. But it only makes the ROA problem worse: companies end up burdened with more unspent cash and a bigger block of dead, unproductive assets. Ironically but irrefutably, this is not good for business.

Assets 8

Assets Balance Sheet Operations A/B Testing 8

Chief Executive

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Fueled by near-zero interest rates and federal stimulus money, public companies amassed a war chest of cheap capital to chase risky assets, strategies and yield. Despite stiff economic headwinds, robust M&A opportunities are there for the taking, with many companies enjoying steady cash flows and strong balance sheets. “In

Balance Sheet 52

Balance Sheet Cash Flow Software Marketing 52

Chris LoCutro

NOVEMBER 12, 2024

I share why reconciling accounts, preparing for taxes, and analyzing financial performance are crucial steps. Acquisitions: Physical and Human Resources (00:31:00) Why understanding your business needs versus wants is crucial when evaluating new hires or assets. They've not done a really good job reconciling their bank accounts.

Assets 59

Assets Revenue Cash Flow Balance Sheet 59

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 14, 2015

The beauty of M&A for examining valuation trends is that M&As reveal the dollar valuations of all assets at the time of the acquisition. Upon acquiring a business, companies have to value the different assets they acquired for their accounts and balance sheet in accordance with accounting and reporting standards.

Balance Sheet 15

Balance Sheet Assets Marketing Accounts 15