Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.

Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.

Ronald T. Wilcox

NewMarket Corporation Professor of Business Administration,
Darden School of Business,
University of Virginia

Ronald Wilcox is an expert in marketing research, marketing analytics, customer relationship management, marketing of financial services, and branding. His litigation experience includes analysis of class certification and damages issues, as well as conducting and rebutting consumer surveys, including conjoint surveys. Professor Wilcox has also provided trial testimony related to branding.

Professor Wilcox formerly served as an economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also an assistant professor at the Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration. Professor Wilcox has consulted to numerous companies, including Sikorsky, Johnson & Johnson, and Visa.

Professor Wilcox’s research has appeared in the Journal of Marketing ResearchManagement ScienceMarketing Science, and other leading marketing and finance journals. His findings have been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Businessweek.

He is a frequent contributor to Forbes and the author of the book Whatever Happened to Thrift? Why Americans Don’t Save and What to Do about It, published by Yale University Press and listed among the Top Five Business Books of 2008 by Kiplinger. Professor Wilcox also coauthored the book Cutting-Edge Marketing Analytics: Real World Cases and Data Sets for Hands On Learning, on the use of customer data to improve marketing decisions, published by FT Press.

Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.

Kinshuk Jerath

Arthur F. Burns Chair of Free and Competitive Enterprise,
Professor of Business in the Marketing Division,
Columbia Business School,
Columbia University

Kinshuk Jerath specializes in technology-enabled marketing, primarily in online advertising, retailing, and customer management. Professor Jerath’s research has evaluated a range of strategic online advertising practices in both sponsored search advertising and display advertising, including keyword management, poaching, and exclusive placement. He has also analyzed how privacy regulations in the online advertising ecosystem affect stakeholders, such as advertisers, publishers, and consumers.

​Professor Jerath’s research on retailing has contributed to the understanding of agency selling in online retailing marketplaces, as well as the associated behaviors of third-party sellers, advertisers, and platform owners. In his work on customer management, Professor Jerath has developed analytical methods to estimate customer lifetime value for online and traditional retailers.

Professor Jerath has served as an expert on online advertising and retailing, and provided expert testimony in deposition and at trial. Outside of litigation, he has consulted to Fortune 500 companies on online marketing.

Professor Jerath’s work has been published in books, as well as articles in leading journals, including Marketing ScienceManagement Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of Interactive Marketing. He also serves on several editorial boards. Professor Jerath speaks widely on subjects related to online advertising and retailing marketplaces, and has presented to universities and corporations in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Hong Kong.

At Columbia Business School, Professor Jerath teaches courses on digital marketing and customer valuation and management. Previously, he served on the faculty of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.

Lorin M. Hitt

Zhang Jindong Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions,
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research

Lorin Hitt is an expert in applied econometrics who works on a broad range of antitrust, product liability, and intellectual property matters. He studies the role of information and information technology in pricing and product strategy decisions, competition, market structure, and consumer behavior.

Professor Hitt’s research focuses on how information and technology create economic value; how goods and services are priced; how competition works in information-intensive industries and online markets; and how consumers search and use information in their decision-making, among other topics. In his research, Professor Hitt utilizes a variety of empirical methods to estimate demand and supply, measure the effect of external events on market prices, and value individual product features in differentiated products.

Professor Hitt has substantial experience addressing class certification, damages, and liability issues. His expertise includes analyzing market data and evaluating proposed empirical methods such as hedonic price analyses, difference-in-differences regression analyses, and conjoint analyses. He has testified in high-profile antitrust, product liability, data privacy, data breach, and intellectual property matters, such as:

Professor Hitt’s research has been published in leading economics and management journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Economic PerspectivesBrookings Papers on Economic ActivityManagement Science, and Information Systems Research.

At the Wharton School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Hitt has taught courses on competition and customer pricing, information systems management, the economics of technology, and data analysis. He has won the annual Wharton Undergraduate Teaching Award more than ten times, and he has also been honored with the Wharton-wide Hauck Award and the University of Pennsylvania-wide Lindback Award for distinguished teaching.

Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.

Stuart C. Gilson

Steven R. Fenster Professor of Business Administration,
Harvard Business School,
Harvard University

Stuart Gilson is an expert in corporate restructuring and valuation. He has deep expertise in bankruptcy and financial distress issues, credit and financial statement analysis, and corporate transactions—including business valuation in M&A settings.

Professor Gilson has provided expert testimony in numerous matters, including multiple trials. He has addressed such topics as corporate restructuring; asset and business valuation; M&A; solvency; fraudulent conveyance; and substantive consolidation. He has consulted on solvency and valuation issues in a variety of industries, such as education, energy (including alternative energy), finance, healthcare, insurance, retail, technology, and transportation.

Professor Gilson’s research and consulting focus on the operational, financial, and legal strategies that companies use to revitalize their business, improve performance, and create value. He is the author of the book Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups, which he developed from a class he has taught for the last twenty years in Harvard’s M.B.A. curriculum.

Professor Gilson has written more than seventy Harvard Business School case studies and teaching notes used in business schools throughout the world. He has also taught extensively in Harvard Business School’s Executive Education programs and received multiple academic research and teaching awards. Turnarounds and Workouts magazine has recognized Professor Gilson as one of the top ten outstanding bankruptcy academics.

Professor Gilson’s research is published in leading academic and practitioner journals and cited by national news media. His work has received several honors, including the prestigious Graham and Dodd Award from the CFA Institute. He was an associate editor of Financial Management and the Journal of Corporate Finance.

Professor Gilson has also served on the advisory and corporate boards of several for-profit and nonprofit organizations and has provided expert advice on bankruptcy law reform in the U.S. and internationally.

Tax Controversy Capabilities

Cornerstone Research has assisted experts for both taxpayers and the IRS opining on a wide variety of issues in transfer pricing matters. Our work has covered all stages of disputes, including discovery, expert report filings, depositions, and trial. We have worked on disputes involving transfer pricing–related transactions such as platform contributions, licensing, and cost-sharing agreements. Our experience involves taxpayers operating in the technology sector (such as online platforms), computer software and hardware, consumer packaged goods, medical devices, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Cornerstone Research has worked on matters involving whether interest charged in intercompany financing transactions reflects the risk of the entity receiving a loan. Our experience includes:

  • Analyzing debt capacity.
  • Identifying and analyzing comparable debt transactions.
  • Determining the appropriate rating methodology to apply for a non-rated, fully owned subsidiary.
  • Analyzing a company’s cash managements and treasury systems to determine how the company performed its internal banking services and how it managed its liquidity.
  • Analyzing a company’s debt capacity to assess whether it would have been able to issue and refinance an equivalent amount of intercompany debt to third parties.
  • Determining an appropriate arm’s-length guarantee fee payment to compensate a parental guarantee for an intercompany loan transaction.

Cornerstone Research has worked with experts to assess the economic substance of complex transactions. Our experience includes:

  • Evaluating the fundamental requirements for tax-advantaged transactions (also known as tax shelters) to be sustained if challenged by the IRS, including whether transactions had a reasonable business purpose.
  • Assisting in calculating the expected value of tax-advantaged transactions given the contemplated tax benefits, upfront costs, risk of audit, chance of disallowance if audited, and potential penalties.
  • Evaluating the responsibilities and duties of taxpayers and tax advisors, and the importance of the representations and assumptions underlying tax-advantaged transactions.
  • Evaluating whether certain transactions economically qualify as a sale. In addition, we have analyzed how certain deferred tax assets of a firm, such as Net Operating Loss carryforwards, can affect transactions.

In tax dispute contexts, Cornerstone Research has experience valuing covered stock option awards, warrants, uncertain tax benefits, and deferred tax assets, among other financial assets.

We have analyzed corporate and individual tax treatments of employee stock options related to stock option backdating allegations. For corporations, we examined the financial statement changes of alternative treatments and gauged whether those were material changes. For individuals, we reviewed how they reported their stock options on their taxes as evidence of when and how stock options were granted.

Cornerstone Research has assessed whether entities meet the criteria to qualify to be classified as a certain kind of business for tax purposes. For example, we have performed assessments of whether an entity should qualify as a not-for-profit.

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