by Bruce | June 2, 2012 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton has always been my favorite—and not because of the arcane fact that my uncle, Robert Ward McEwen (variant spelling), was the 14th President of that well-regarded upstate New York liberal arts college named for you-know-who....
by Bruce | May 25, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
The conventional wisdom has quickly coalesced around how all right-thinking folks ought to view Facebook’s IPO: It was a disaster. Some reasons for this view (NASDAQ’s humiliating meltdown, three shareholder class actions are already pending against FB)...
by Bruce | May 17, 2012 | Articles, Finance
“Follow the money?” Well, we can try. Using a combination of now-public material—the 2010 bond offering PPM being a godsend in that regard—and my own carefully constructed estimates based on other published reports including interviews with people in a...
by Bruce | May 14, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Beginning to emerge are lessons from the implosion of Dewey. I’ve believed, and written, for some time that the root causes of the failure, which is massive, spectacular, tragic, and utterly unnecessary, were self-inflicted: Unintentional suicide by drug...
by Bruce | May 5, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
OK, so we’re not quoted in the New York Times every day, and today we were, at not inconsiderable length, about Dewey. Here’s the The New York Times piece published on the front page of today’s Business section, by James Stewart. The photo is of...
by Bruce | May 1, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
The unfolding Dewey story has surprised people only with its apparently inexhaustible capacity to continue surprising us, and with its reliable pattern of consistently surpassing our own worst fears about how many things can go wrong at one and the same law firm. With...
