Experience Stern | News & Events

NYU Stern’s Citi Leadership & Ethics Program, sponsored by the Citi Foundation, has appointed Ellen Seidman, former director of the US Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision, as its 2013-2014 Citi Leadership & Ethics Distinguished Fellow.

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "While some traders and economists shrug their shoulders and write off recent problems—such as this week's options trading snafu or the 2010 'flash crash'—as the price of progress, others say the problems are becoming so widespread that exchanges and big firms need to be held to a higher standard. 'It shows that corners are being cut and not enough is being spent on testing these systems,' said financial historian Richard Sylla of New York University's Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Marketplace -- “'What happened was the computer program mistakenly started to sell options at like one dollar an option, when in fact the market price was higher than that,' says Richard Sylla, an economics professor at New York University. 'Basically, Goldman sold a lot of options cheaply. And if they have to buy them back, they will lose money because they will have to pay the market price for them.'”

Excerpt from Motley Fool -- "In the late 1960s...Edward Altman, published a formula that would change finance: the Altman Z-score. Altman researched nearly 70 bankrupt manufacturing companies' financial statements pre-bankruptcy to determine what these companies had in common. This research gave rise to an easy-to-use equation that could predict bankruptcy."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- “'He did very well to refuse the pressure of lowering interest rates at the time when government deficits were mounting last year,' said Viral Acharya, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Economic Times -- "'Different components of human rights like freedom of speech, discrimination, harassment at work, security practices and supply chain issues need to be integrated in different courses at business schools, and it could vary from region to region,' [Posner] says."

Excerpt from Business News Daily -- "'Anyone teaching has to believe that given the right tools and opportunities, every student can be a member of the entrepreneurial class,' [Williams] said. 'You can't change personality, but you can change key habits.'"

Excerpt from Fox Business -- “'The Fed has shown itself to be the central banker of the world. The waters are not exactly calm right now so it’s more than likely that there will be some tests for the new Fed chief,' said Richard Sylla, an economist and financial historian at NYU."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "They're just not localizing for the market. They're trying to shove a square peg in a round hole...The way people tend to find luxury brands is initially through search. And most aren't typing in English. They're typing in Cyrillic. And a lot of brands just haven't optimized their content...they just haven't done the proper tagging. It's basic blocking and tackling."

Excerpt from Fox Business -- "Galloway says the decline in specialty retail stores on Facebook shows that most users don’t come to the social network when they plan to shop. 'They don’t approach Facebook with a commerce mindset,' says Galloway. 'People are there to socialize and look at pictures of friends.'”

Excerpt from Yahoo! Finance -- "The problem with Icahn’s plan is that such financial machinations can be a distraction for a technology company that needs to focus on developing innovative new products, according to Arun Sundararajan, professor of information sciences at New York University. 'This kind of financial engineering isn't in the long-term interest of Apple's shareholders,' he says. 'They're still a tremendously valuable company, but stock price boosts from financial engineering shouldn't distract from the fact that their business model doesn't look as solid and dominant as it did four years ago.'"

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Surveying executives across industries, they asked how many had issues and concerns at work that they did not articulate. The answer came back: 85%. By anyone’s measure, that’s a lot of silence. What it means is that we go to enormous time, trouble and expense to hire smart people – and then they shut up."

Excerpt from Project Syndicate -- "Without dismissing the downside risks, I remain cautiously optimistic about the global economy’s prospects. With greater clarity in terms of Chinese and US policy, both economies should gain momentum. That will give developing countries (many of which face difficult domestic policy choices) a tailwind, while making the substantial challenges in Europe and Japan easier to address."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- “'Recent regulatory changes will cause dealers to reduce risk and to make markets less aggressively,' Bruce Tuckman, senior fellow of financial markets research at the non-profit Center for Financial Stability and a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said in an Aug. 14 telephone interview. 'End users will lose some liquidity as dealers adjust to higher risk capital mandates, lower leverage limits, and increased margin requirements.'”

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "When a Fed chairman doesn't command strong majorities, it undermines his voice domestically and globally and creates uncertainty about policy, said William Silber, who documented those episodes in the Volcker biography, 'Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence.' 'Disagreement is healthy,' Mr. Silber said. 'Uncertainty is universally bad. It raises the cost of everything.'"

Excerpt from Financial Times -- "Ms Martin-Leke was keen to create the missing link between Africa’s abundant raw materials, being used by local artisans, and the international market. 'I wanted to preserve African craftsmanship - combining artisan with contemporary and timeless products,' she says. She believed the best way to do this would be through a luxury brand: 'The luxury industry conveys culture and identity. It is a country’s or continent’s image presented to the world - what better way to make an impact and change [perceptions].' Nine months after graduating from TRIUM in September 2012, she launched Yswara, a luxury retailer of African products, setting up an all-female workforce to give opportunities to local women."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "'My guess is that there is no mercy for someone who earns $10 to $20 million,' said Baruch Lev, a professor at New York University Stern School of Business. 'The risk, people think, is commensurate with the compensation and perks.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "The reality is Icahn has enough power within the organization at this point through ownership that the firm would not be able to ignore him completely. And [Apple CEO Tim] Cook will certainly have to at least have some serious conversations. What will come out of that? We'll have to see. It really depends, I think, how much Cook has a clear plan in his mind for the cash that he's sitting on and doesn't want to give it away versus he's kind of uncertain, in which case he's going to be more willing to give that cash back to Icahn at this point."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "I think what's going on a Cisco is a larger metaphor for what's happened in the economy over the last 5 years, and that is, if you look at shareholder growth, or earnings growth, it's largely been a function of cost-cutting, not revenue growth or innovation."

Excerpt from The Week -- "If all the factors responsible for the massive decline of the newspaper industry, Craigslist, the internet's free classifieds page, has long attracted a big share of the blame. So it's no surprise that a new study by Robert Seamans of New York University's Stern School of Business and Feng Zhu of the Harvard Business School seems, on its face at least, to back up the blame-Craigslist argument. What is surprising is the actual numbers. Analyzing how 1,000 newspapers reacted to the rise of Craigslist from 2000 to 2007, the professors estimated that classified ad buyers saved $5 billion by posting free listings on Craigslist instead of buying ads in newspapers. The obvious corollary here is that newspapers lost the $5 billion that consumers saved, and saw their classified ads business — one of three longstanding revenue pillars, along with circulation revenue and more traditional ads — all but decimated."

Excerpt from Forbes -- “A new study by two business school professors examined the issue and concluded that, indeed, Craigslist took a giant bite out of newspapers’ revenues — some $5 billion between the years 2000 and 2007. And that’s not even looking at the Times, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, which the authors left out in order to have a more homogeneous sample. 'Our study definitely suggests that Craigslist has had a huge effect on newspapers,' says Robert Seamans, an assistant professor of management and organizations at the NYU Stern School of Business. Coauthored with Feng Zhu of Harvard Business School, the paper will be published by the journal Management Science."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "Boards are meant to be assets, not liabilities and recently [the JCPenney board] has become a liability. They need to just get out of the way of the CEO, be supportive of the process, and let those good people try and get back to work on what is a very, very challenging position for JCPenney. They're kind of stuck in the middle. This is a difficult time for JCPenney."

In a new study, Robert Seamans, assistant professor of management and organizations at the NYU Stern School of Business, and Feng Zhu at Harvard Business School, examine the impact of Craigslist, a website providing classified-advertising services, on local US newspapers during the 2000s.

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "They say a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a million words. So as we've gotten more broadband, more technology and more ability to deliver great content and also get great content from our users, these visual platforms and video platforms have really taken root. And what's exciting about them is advertisers love them. A video is a fantastic emotional, very visceral medium, so they attract dollars, and these platforms are going to where the dollars are."

Excerpt from MarketWatch -- “'[The High Line has] had a deep impact, but it was facilitating a transformation that was already happening,' says Joseph Foudy, an economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. 'Cities around the world are going to have to be very careful about what neighborhoods can actually be transformed.'”