Michael J. McDonald

Innosight • 28th February 2024

Four Keys to Successful Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Hospital systems and other care providers have stepped up IT spending in the wake of the pandemic, making digital transformation a top priority. To generate the best long-term results from this spending, organizations should consider steps such as aligning on a vision, identifying gaps in services, and ensuring that transformation efforts are integrated into their comprehensive master plans.

Toptal Finance Blog • 9th March 2023

Strategic Financial Leadership: 6 Skills CFOs Need Now | Toptal®

Succeeding as a modern CFO is more demanding than ever before. Here are the skills you need to become a strategic partner who leverages technology and insights to drive growth and plan for the future.

1st September 2022

Digital Ledgers vs. Databases: Can Blockchain Optimize Your Supply Chain?

Blockchain isn’t just for cryptocurrency. The technology can also be used to make supply chain management more efficient, transparent, and secure. Here’s how.

1st August 2022

Refining Your Middle-market Merger Strategy: From Acquisition to Integration

The M&A failure rate runs as high as 90%, and middle-market companies tend to fare worse than larger ones due to more limited resources. Here’s how to ensure that your next acquisition succeeds.

1st May 2022

Tell a Compelling Story: Pitch Deck Components That Persuade

To persuade investors to fund your startup, your pitch deck must do more than present a solid business case. It must generate an emotional response.

Toptal Finance Blog • 1st June 2021

Crypto Exchange Wars: How Coinbase Stacks Up Against Its Rivals

The mainstream is warming up to cryptocurrencies, making the exchange business hotly contested and challenging leaders like Coinbase.

Toptal Finance Blog • 1st April 2021

How Roblox Became One of Gaming’s Hottest Companies

If you don’t have kids, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Roblox, a free online gaming platform best known for its Lego-like graphics. But if you’re an investor, you’re probably paying attention now.

Toptal Insights Blog • 1st March 2021

As Talent Goes Remote, Smaller Cities Make Big Gains

San Francisco and New York City are not the draws they once were because of a surge in virtual work options. Now, surprising new hubs are emerging.

Bloomberg • 31st December 2020

Top Stock Pickers Crush S&P While Failing to Stem Outflows

Star mutual fund managers are beating the soaring stock market in 2020 -- but customers are abandoning them for index-trackers anyway.

Bloomberg • 24th November 2020

Grantham’s Bear Market Call Tests Patience of GMO Fund Investors

Jeremy Grantham’s GMO is paying the price for yet another contrarian call by its co-founder.

Bloomberg • 27th April 2020

Hillhouse Reloads After Building $60 Billion Asia Juggernaut

Less than two decades after Lei Zhang started Hillhouse with $20 million from
Yale University’s endowment, the 48-year-old has become an object of
fascination to those in finance yet remains an enigma. The firm has
mushroomed from a boutique hedge fund into a $60 billion behemoth that’s
made prescient bets on stocks, private equity and venture capital.

Bloomberg • 24th September 2019

Harvard Endowment: How Investment Into Brazil Farmland Tanked

Colin Butterfield was frantic. The Harvard University endowment executive wanted to unload a disastrous $270 million investment in Brazilian farmland. But the school had no takers, and it was burning through millions of dollars.

Bloomberg • 11th September 2019

David Swensen Made Yale Fabulously Rich and Changed Endowments

He walked away from the stock market, built a network of elite private funds, and created a fortune with no end in sight.

Bloomberg • 15th November 2018

Harvard Spent $100 Million on Vineyards. Now It's Fighting With the Neighbors

The fight illustrates the risks that Harvard’s endowment, the largest in higher education, once embraced with its unusual strategy of investing directly in massive agriculture projects around the world.

Bloomberg • 26th June 2018

Harvard Billionaires Bail Out Alma Mater From Poor Fund Returns

The university’s endowment returns may lag the Ivy League average, but Wall Street’s elite make the school a fundraising powerhouse.

Bloomberg • 27th October 2016

Harvard Called ‘Lazy, Fat, Stupid’ in Endowment Report Last Year

Harvard University’s money managers collected tens of millions in bonuses by exceeding “easy-to-beat” investment goals even as the college’s endowment languished, employees complained in an internal review.

Bloomberg • 14th April 2014

Small U.S. Colleges Battle Death Spiral as Enrollment Drops

At a Dowling College campus on Long Island’s south shore, a fleet of unused shuttle buses sits in an otherwise empty parking lot. A dormitory is shuttered, as are a cafeteria, bookstore and some classrooms in the main academic building.

Bloomberg • 22nd April 2013

Boston Hero Looked Guy With Bag Straight in the Eyes

Before the videotapes, before the lucky mobile phone, before the shootouts, there was an extraordinarily courageous 27-year-old named Jeff Bauman who helped lead the FBI on the trail of the suspects in the bombing of the Boston Marathon -- and there was the anti-war activist who probably saved Bauman’s life.

Bloomberg • 27th February 2013

God a Click Away as Web Courses Fuel Falwell’s College

Liberty is capitalizing on a niche in the evangelical community, which accounts for about a quarter of the U.S. population, and is also helping chart a course for other schools to expand online.

Bloomberg • 1st February 2011

Whitney Municipal-Bond Apocalypse Short on Specifics

“There’s not a doubt in my mind that you will see a spate of municipal-bond defaults,” the banking analyst Meredith Whitney, said on a Dec. 19 segment of CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes,” sparking a month of fireworks in the municipal bond market.

Bloomberg • 18th December 2010

Harvard Swaps Are So Toxic Even Summers Won’t Explain Them

The world's richest university paid a steep price for speculating on derivatives under former president Larry Summers.

Bloomberg • 11th November 2010

A Wall Street Gimmick That Soaks Taxpayers

The subprime mortgage crisis isn't the only Wall Street-created calamity upending the finances of U.S. states and cities. Financial derivatives known as interest-rate swaps have also blown up, costing hundreds of U.S. governments and nonprofits more than $4 billion to get out of what were marketed as strategies for reducing borrowing costs.

Bloomberg • 30th June 2010

Bankers Who Broke Big Dig With Swaps Gone Awry Get Paid for Fix

The same bankers who sold Massachusetts interest-rate swaps that blew up the debt financing for the so-called Big Dig road and tunnel project in Boston -- costing taxpayers $100 million -- are getting even more money to fix what they broke.