All Insights Articles

By 2006, the subprime market had grown to 20% of the total U.S. mortgage market, and 75% of these loans were securitized and sold off to investors around the world, facilitating an influx of capital. With credit easily available, more people than ever before were able to buy homes — but then the market seized up.

What used to be the new capital?

The Dubai International Financial Center was established in 2004 as a “gateway” to the capital of the oil-producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Yale SOM’s Ira Millstein and Jonathan Koppell spoke with a group of experienced investors in the region about the DIFC and the role of capital in the GCC.

The wealth generated by the dot-com boom of the 1990s produced a new generation of philanthropists, determined to use their capital and their business savvy to solve social problems. A decade later, have they transformed the world of philanthropy?

A South African government program aimed at addressing deep historical inequities enabled a union-owned investment fund to build up enough capital to reach around the globe. The mostly black workers in the union now own a piece of a hotel chain in the Middle East and a clean-energy company in Pittsburgh. How much can be learned from this success?

Q(n) readers offer a variety of perspectives on the question.

From 2005 through the middle of 2007, one public company after another was bought out and went private. The size of the deals escalated — Hertz for $15 billion, HCA for $33 billion, Equity Office Properties for $39 billion, TXU Energy for $44 billion. Then the megadeals stopped. Andrew Metrick explains what happened.

Sensing a broad change in the capital markets in recent years, the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance set out to better understand what was happening. Jonathan Koppell describes what he and his colleagues learned from a series of discussions with investors, directors, managers, and regulators around the globe.

Healthcare is a field known for its complexity and fragmentation. Managing a massive cross-sectoral healthcare project is always a challenge. Coordinating the healthcare response to a disaster puts a strained system under even more pressure. John Piescik ’81 looked into the way the healthcare system responds to disaster for MITRE a not-for-profit company that operates three federally funded research and development centers. His findings may have implications well beyond healthcare, providing a means to manage solutions to some of the complex problems facing society.

Organizational change can occur at the level of technological innovation or at the level of human interaction. Consulting firm Katzenbach Partners studied customer service across industries and developed a model that proposes creating competitive advantage through a holistic approach to customer service. A recent white paper, “The Empathy Engine: Achieving Breakthroughs in Patient Service,” applies this analysis to the healthcare industry. Q3 talked with Jenny Machida, a leader in Katzenbach Partners’ healthcare practice and one of the authors of the paper, about the personal side of patient service.