Barclays Plc and Abn Amro Case Study

Barclays envisions itself as a leading transatlantic bank. It aims to generate sustainable value for its shareholders by emerging as one of the biggest consumer, corporate and investment banks catering some 24 million customers in the Personal, Wealth and Business Banking domains. Barclays aims to achieve this through its two business divisions namely Barclays UK and Barclays International. Following are some key strategic aims and objectives of the Group.

Given the Commonwealth Bank Group’s franchise position, the organisation aims to capture the opportunity to generate growth domestically and outside of Australia by identifying and meeting more of the needs of its customers.

In this part of the assignment I am going to be researching the economic factors of Barclays as a business.

Barclays Bank, one of the biggest multinational banking and financial services companies in the world, headquartered in London. Barclays is the oldest bank of British, and it has a long history more than three hundred years, which can be traced to 1690. Barclays is the first bank in the world that owns the Automatics Teller Machine, and issued the first Visa card in 1966 and the first debt card in 1987 of British. Up to 2012, Barclays was the seventh biggest bank in the world with the total asset of £1.49 trillion.

CIBC has focused its core business on retail and business banking, wealth management, and whole sale banking. They have shown a proven track record of providing there customers with financial services and advice through a group upwards of 1100 branches worldwide. Strategies CIBC has portrayed is to continually find new ways to enhance the experience of the client and to stimulate safe revenue growth. CIBC has put emphases on creating deep meaningful relationships with all clients, constantly trying new ways to improve service and sales prospects and to create relationships with new clients while retaining existing clients for a long period of time (CIBC).

Barclays comprehensive portfolio of businesses and expertise in the financial markets attracts me as it is a world of opportunities for a person like me who is full of hunger learn and grow

The industry that I have chosen to analyze for this paper in the banking industry. The companies which I have selected to analyze are Bank of America & Southeastern Bank. Bank of America will represent as the example for the company who has acquired and merged with other banks, and Fresno Southeastern Bank will act as the example for the bank who has never merged with a larger bank in any form or has been acquired. Both these banks offer similar products to their customers, for checking and savings accounts to home and car loans. They both offer investment products as well. Bank of America has a lot more products on a larger scale due to the size of their company, and the mergers they have made over their history. They operate worldwide

The report will look into the external influences that the chosen organisation (Barclays Bank) are subjected to and the importance of those factors would be briefly discussed. The second part will also discuss the relevance of ethics and corporate social responsibility and it influences its policies. The effectiveness of the response of the company and area of improvement will be discussed.

We see the banking industry as a good opportunity for investors because there will be a combination of changes that will affect the banking industry, including rising interest rates, a less zealous regulatory environment, tax cuts. Yet, the news is only one of the determinant factors, investigation of the entire industry is necessary before buying stocks. First, the threat of new entrants in the banking industry is medium because opening up a small bank working on the local level is feasible, but what makes it hard to survive is to earn consumers’ trusts. With less new entrants, the existing firms have more potential of earning profits. Since capital is the essential asset on any banks, the power of suppliers is moderate to high.

Financial statements for banks have uniquely different analytical problem than statements for manufacturing, service and most companies in general. Therefore this analysis of JPMorgan and Chase 's financial statements requires a different approach in order to recognize the banks worth as an investment.

In this section, there are two different case studies which is Lloyds Bank Group and the Deloitte. These two cases indicated that how the companies have been confronting the gender issues, while carrying the employee selection function and to what extent the female has been successful in ensuring the desired objectivity.

Barclay’s over its long history has grown into one of the largest financial groups in the United Kingdom3. Since there early start in banking, Barclays has since then diversified itself into investment banking, and investment management as well. They operate over 850 branches in over 60 countries in which 2000 are based in the United Kingdom3. “The company has over 4.5 million registered online bankers and over 10.6 million Barclaycard customers in the United Kingdom”3. Barclay’s is currently the 7th largest bank in the world with assets valuing $2.41 trillion.

The purpose of this report is comprehensive quantitative analysis for the financial performance of Barclays Bank. Quantitative analysis is an important method of looking beyond the numbers and understanding the stories they tell. It is quantitative analysis that gives way to qualitative analysis and allows us to gauge the running of a business better. Quantitative analysis is key towards improving our understanding of the relationships that may exist among key financial variables or key factors influencing the performance of a firm. The application of quantitative analysis towards business performance is a key method of identifying problems that may hinder the growth of the business and tackle their root cause.

In 1996, Citibank was an emergent banking institution attempting to increase its market share in the competitive Los Angeles area. In order to do so, the bank’s strategy was to focus slightly less on their financial growth, and much more on providing “a high level of service to its customers”. Management viewed this paradigm shift as “critical to the long term success of the franchise”.

Aberdeen Asset Management plc (for the purpose of this report I will refer to the company as Aberdeen) is an international investment management group that manages assets for third parties; institutions and individuals (p.2, MarketLine Company Profile, 2015). Aberdeen is an extremely large firm and results from the last financial year showed net revenue of £1,117.6m and a pre-tax profit of £324.4m (p.1, Final Results 2014, AAM Plc). The group employs over 2,600 members of staff, in 33 offices across 25 different countries around the world, with its headquarters based in Aberdeen, Scotland (p.4, MarketLine Company Profile, 2015). The company has seen rapid growth since it was founded in 1983 through acquisitions and internal growth. In 1991 it began floating on the London Stock Exchange under the name Aberdeen Trust PLC (p.5, MarketLine Company Profile, 2014). Fig. 2 shows how the success of the company is reflected in its increasing share price since floatation, earning it a place in the coveted FTSE 100 Index in 2012 (Our History, aberdeen_asset.co.uk). The firm is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom jurisdiction. Aberdeen is a public limited company (plc) which means it has limited liability and its shares may be freely sold and traded by the public, Fig 2 shows the fluctuation of the share price in recent years. The current market capitalisation of Aberdeen, which is calculated