International Financial Services : Bear Stearns

If the depreciation method changes from straight-line method to accelerated method then, depreciation expense would be increase and net income would decrease. The EPS ratio would represent a loss of $0.19 per share.

In the introduction of the book, Ho explicitly states all of her credibility through the positions she held and the connections she made throughout her fieldwork at Wall Street. In addition, Ho is clear in her collection of data through multiple different mediums and different audiences. However, Ho does discuss her racial background and the diversity of those who she was interviewing, yet she does not continue this discussion throughout the book. Additionally, the language and vocabulary used throughout the book are highly specified for a specific scholarly and informed audience. Therefore, while this may not be the best recommendation to those who are not knowledgeable about financial terminology, there is still a substantial amount of research and data about the culture of Wall Street. Overall, this book makes a contribution to the literature on work because of its unique and detailed perspective about a small pocket of industry that ultimately, becomes a model of how work should be conducted. Wall Street shapes not just the stock market but also the nature of employment and what kind of workers are valued. Investment firms are the nucleus of the work market and influence corporate America in the way things should be constantly moving and changing in the market to remain efficient. It is then evident how this ethnography is a key addition to the studies of

During the times leading up to the power struggle, the power dynamic within Lehman was steadily shifting as trading profits became increasingly more important to Lehman versus traditional investment banking profits. Thus, Glucksman was able to step into the spot light and Peterson became more expendable. Peter Peterson’s core

IntroductionLinda Best, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) from Sarnia, Canada is the founder and sole shareholder of Best Financial Services Inc. which was established on January 1, 2001. Sarnia, the largest city in South Ontario, bordered the United States and was heavily populated with aging baby boomers and blue-collar workers. Best Financial earned its revenues mainly from blue-collar workers nearing retirement. Best financial had formed strong relationships with many clients throughout Sarnia and managed over 1000 financial plans allowing a steady revenue and profit growth. The key services provided by Best Financial are risk management, tax preparation and professional money management. The company’s Assets under Management were

Ho talks about how for the Wall Street people the, “key criterion of smartness is an ability to “wow” the clients- generally speaking, the top executives of Fortune 500 Companies. In this sense, although technical skill and business savvy also help to constitute smartness on Wall Street, they are often considered secondary, learnable ‘on the job.’(167) Ho describes that being smart on Wall Street is being able to adapt and because they are able to do all the things they call secondary learning a process on the jobs they are thought of as being smart and this is where the authority is established. Their dominance is only justified through ability to be elite, which for the most part they establish through being from an Ivy League school and working on Wall Street. According to Ho, Wall Street’s pushes their authority through, the institutional culture of Wall Street broadly conceived, where job experiences and workplace incentives map onto elite biographies investment bankers not only imbibe a particular ideology of holder value and spread it across corporate America, but they are also pushed to refashion and reconstruct the working lives of million in the image of their own.” (168) From Ho’s point of view the notion of Wall Street dominance is based on their ability to influence which provides their view with

The significant finding from this article is that the world of finance is a very strange world. This world can offer opportunities to many, and at the same time, it can prove to be a mess for the others. Many people are not corrupt in their person, but by being negligent or by being careless, they fail at doing their duty successfully at some points in time. However, what the article talks about is the complete picture. Steven A Cohen faced a problem. He got entangled in an enormous financial mess.

This idea of ‘smartness’ being linked with the position of an upper-class man, was a universal want, especially of those who were not of the upper-class before. By creating this sense of superiority in a financial hierarchy, the investment bankers were able to reach the ego of the naïve undergraduate students. Constantly advertising this idea that the students were indeed “the best”, “the greatest”, and “the brightest” (Ho 167), investment bankers were able to persuade to the students that Wall Street was the place to be; a luxurious place to be filled with rich people with power and respect. With this aspect, an environment was created that that aroused an interest within students to pursue a field in banking. This way of marketing is very similar to the marketing campaign in Watters’ text, and Watters’ research can help better understand how investment bankers try beguile students into pursuing a career the bankers themselves want

The Charles Schwab & Company was founded shortly after the U.S. SEC deregulated brokerage commissions in 1975. The company differentiated itself at the time by becoming a self-service brokerage house that put the power in investor’s hands to make critical decisions while paying up to 75% less than traditional brokerage firms. This established the brand as a trend setter, which it further cemented by becoming a technological leader in 1996 when it introduced an online trading platform. Schwab then began to further cut prices and offer financial services through three different market segments:

Another ethnography of Wall Street was carried out by the anthropologist Karen Ho, who, like Gillian Tett, gives us a true perspective about the nature of the financial industry and helps suggest important factors about a liberal democracy in contemporary times. In her book, Ho raises certain issues with regards to the culture of finance. The banks high employee liquidity created a culture of job insecurity, often using practices and assumptions in effort to create and increase shareholder value. However, the attempt to appreciate the value was through the means of the derivative market, which became an obvious indicator that their assumptions would lead to an economic crisis. Capitalism is run by Wall Street personalities who have strong,

The stock market, a market with a lot of risks, successfully awakens my desire to study about business. Not only because the desire of making plenty of money in the future, but also because of the desire to explore the mystery of the number world. Although luck could be a very imperative factor in the stock market, I believe profession can be the same important feature, too.

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)

1. What role did Bear’s culture play in its positioning vis-à-vis its competitors, and what role might that

Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest and most successful hedge fund organization, but has a very different culture that you will not find at any other corporation. They follow a radical transparency and truth at all cost theory. The founder, Ray Dalio, believes that his unique culture is the reason for Bridgewater’s success. Through closely reviewing the facts, SWOT analysis, and several options that Bridgewater could do, I recommend that they should not change their culture because it has given them success and a competitive advantage.

American Express, also know as AMEX, is a global financial services company headquartered in New York City and founded in 1850. With 54,000 employees and a revenue of over 35 billion dollars American Express stands tall on the New York Stock Exchange (Sec.gov). American Express is best known for it’s credit cards, which make up about twenty-five percent of total dollar volume in credit card transactions in The United States of America (Reviews.greatplacetowork.com). American Express’ goal is to maintain a leading and almost elite reputation with as many qualified card holders as possible. American Express does this by concentrating on the customer’s experience and branding that experience. American Express’ key components in maintaining and further exceling into this goal includes focusing on their human recourses, social responsibility, and marketing techniques.

The move came after Bear Stearns was bleeding cash after word spread about the company’s crumbling position. European banks and other brokerage clients were pulling their investments and loans with Bear Stearns rapidly—and the company was losing billions in a week. In a swift move, the CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Schwartz, was connected with the FED Chairman Ben Bernake, who agreed to loan money to JPMorgan if the financier company took over the quickly deteriorating Bear Stearns. It is argued that the FED was right in doing so as this move not save one of the largest American investment banks thus preventing a crushing blow to the US economy.