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Spain Is Now Making Ireland's Mistakes

Harvard Business Review

Just like Ireland, Spain had a credit boom financed mostly with external debt, which meant that the balance sheets of their banks are now stuffed with bad debts as asset values collapse. And yet in the run up to the collapse in 2007, the combined asset footprint of the three main Irish banks was around 400 percent of GDP.

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The Data Says Climate Change Could Cost Investors Trillions

Harvard Business Review

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.

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Coastal Cities Are Increasingly Vulnerable, and So Is the Economy that Relies on Them

Harvard Business Review

That means that many of our great, low-lying coastal cities are what we call “stranded assets.” Absent a civil engineering miracle, the entire city will become a stranded asset that society will have to write off. And it’s not alone: Reuters estimates at least $1.4 shoreline, but the number is much probably larger.

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Enabling the Natural Act of Entrepreneurship

Harvard Business Review

Taxes on revenues (not to be confused with VAT ), taxes on assets, taxes that are paid in advance of profits or receipts, tax refunds that take months to be repaid — these are a huge burden to a rapidly scaling company in which cash flow management is a matter of survival. Governments and shareholders should have different motivations.

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Three Reasons the Euro Zone Deal Won't Work

Harvard Business Review

The creditor countries hence decided to allow the use of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to directly recapitalize the damaged balance sheets of Europe's banks, specifically the Spanish banks. And market participants were initially thrilled. Yields on sovereign bonds fell immediately following the deal's announcement.

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Know When to Kill Your Brand

Harvard Business Review

There may have been another business that they could have started, utilizing the company’s assets (real estate, technology, staff, etc.) and creating a different brand — or they could have shut down the company and sold off their assets sooner when they would have been more valuable.

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M&A Special Report: The Great Deal Reset

Chief Executive

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