I’ve been writing a lot of about college finances, most recently for Belt, and most of the stories of trouble colleges follow a predictable combination of enrollment dropoff and financial shortfall. The announced closing of Sweet Briar College in early 2015 deviated from this. Enrollment was declining, but the financial position was okay. What was… [Read More]
Blog
Tag: Fiduciary responsibility
Corporations, government, Hobby Lobby, and socially responsible investing, part 1
There are about 50 million corporate governance issues in the news right now. It’s too much for one blog post! So there will be three. First, the Hobby Lobby decision and corporate structure. Second, the quasi-public nature of professional sports. And third, what investors should consider about socially responsible investing. First: Hobby Lobby and corporate… [Read More]
Cato’s Problems and Nonprofit Structure
The Washingtonian Magazine has a long story about management tensions at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. The most interesting part, to me, was this tidbit: the Cato Institute has shareholders because Kansas corporation law allows non-profits to have a corporate ownership structure. That’s really unusual. A typical non-profit organization is “owned” by its donors… [Read More]
Fiduciary Responsiblity and Susan G. Komen for the Cure
At this point, we all know what happened: Susan G. Komen for the Cure decided to cut grant funding for Planned Parenthood, the executives gave conflicting stories about why it was cutting funding, and people all over raged on Facebook, Twitter, and what have you. Once criticism that I saw, several times, was the idea… [Read More]