A Message from the Editor

Abstract

In the introduction to the Summer 2020 issue of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, editor Don Chew pays tribute to Michael C. Jensen, Harvard Business School professor emeritus and co-founder of SSRN. This issue of the JACF focuses on the subject of "Private Equity and Public Companies" and is devoted in large part to exploring the extent to which Jensen’s predictions have panned out. In what is clear testimony to the power of Jensen’s thinking, the growth and global expansion of private equity during the past 30 years have been extraordinary. In addition to the resources provided by SSRN to many academic beneficiaries, Jensen is best known among his finance colleagues as the heir to Adolf Berle in formulating the theory of "agency costs" and as the intellectual father of leveraged buyouts and private equity.