WSJ: LBO 101

Professor Colin Blaydon via The Wall Street Journal about increased interest from students in private equity and hedge funds classes.

This past spring, as many as half of the 240-person student body at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H., signed up for a class on private equity, eager to learn how these deals are crafted. Just 20% or so of students wanted in on the class when it got started in the late 1990s, says Colin Blaydon, director of the school's Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship. Coming this fall in Prof. Blaydon's course, responding to a torrent of interest from students: a special class on hedge funds.

Source: The Wall Street Journal by Diya Gullapalli July 29, 2006

BW: How Failure Breeds Success

Professor Chris Trimble via Business Week about the importance of companies embracing their mistakes and learning from them by providing Intuit's case as an example:

Unlike Intuit, most companies don't spend enough time and resources looking backward, says Chris Trimble, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and co-author of 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators. That's a mistake. "How do you learn if you don't examine the past?" asks Trimble.

Source: Business Week by Jena McGregor July 3, 2006

U.S. Net Debt Increases 14% To Record-Level $2.69 Trillion

Professor Andrew Bernard via The Wall Street Journal about the U.S. net debt increase and its consequences for the country.

Problems arise if growth in the U.S. slows relative to other countries and foreigners then look elsewhere for returns. "The way to think of that is if your income growth slows down, the creditors are going to stop lending to you and demand repayment," said Andrew Bernard, professor of international economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

If that happens, the worst-case scenario is that interest rates will surge in the U.S., the dollar will weaken and the economy will contract. "The key for the United States is if our [economic] growth rate and productivity growth rate slow down, we'll have large repayment obligations," Prof. Bernard said.

Source: The Wall Street Journal by Michael M. Phillips June 30