Merrill Lynch Case Study

The Vanguard Group turned 42 years old this year and its mission statement remains the same - To take a stand for all investors, treat them fairly, and give them the best chance for investment success. It pioneered the industry first index fund and is one of the largest asset management companies in the world. Year after year Vanguard dominates in cash flows and client advocacy. Part of its success can be attributed to its unique corporate structure... The Vanguard Group is owned by its funds which are owned by investors, and the board of directors is tasked to commit to the best interests of the clients. With such a great brand recognition and strong foothold in the industry, what are the components in Vanguard 's value chain?

Grove Street Advisors (“GSA”) is a leading fund-of-funds, focused on investing in “low risk” top-tier private equity funds that are not excessively large nor highly levered. GSA is faced with a number of strategic alternatives to help catalyze the firm’s next stage of growth. We propose that GSA expand globally and continue to build expertise in relatively underserved global PE markets such as China and India to help meet its objectives of satisfying customer needs, enhancing its international reputation, staying responsive to trends in private equity, and ultimately maximizing profitability.

A decade ago the Lehman Brothers were the fourth largest investment bank in America. Dealing with Investment banking and investment management, the Lehman Brothers was one of the largest global financial service providers. Consequently, the subprime mortgage crisis left the company filing for the declaration of the chapter 11 bankruptcy protections, due to the unnecessary undertaken risk and obnoxious negligence accusations directed towards the group. Companies should utilize observational and analytical pundit functions in identifying the presence of crisis situations to avoid an economic downturn in the business (Pontell, 2014). The fraud would have prevented through stronger and better internal controls, which

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is commonly referred as the Dodd-Frank Act. This act was passed as a response to the Great Recession in order to prevent potential financial debacle in the future. This regulation has a significant impact on American financial services industry by placing major changes on the financial regulation and agencies since the Great Depression. This paper examines the history and impact of Dodd-Frank Act on American financial services industry.

The financial industry had gone to several crises through the decades. Around 2008, Alex Preston notice that the investments banking industry was in a crisis. Big banks were closing its doors or selling out to other companies. As it was the case of the National City Corp.; the first ever American’s mortgage maker had to close its doors after taking a large amount of proprietary risk. Other big financial companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to avoid having to go down the same way, became bank holding companies, which means that these companies could receive emergency federal funds.

In Frontline’s The Meltdown, the causes of the stock market crash of 2008 came into discussion. The topics regarding Bear Stearns, the Lehman Brothers’ and their collapse, and the huge bailout made in results to the market crash. There were great points being made on the mistakes Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke did not view from their perspective, which in turns were the problems that made up the crash.

These losses necessitated governmental action in the financial markets. Companies such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns lost all of their stock’s value and were forced into bankruptcy. This risk spread throughout the American banks, forcing the American government to step in and buy all of the securitized, troubled assets from the balance sheets of

1. Adams espouses a “market first” analysis of opportunity by looking for discontinuities. Is this substantive or window-dressing? Do the four types of discontinuities represent applicable guidelines? Are they comprehensive, or are there other discontinuity templates that a venture investor would find useful?

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. With $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt, Lehman 's bankruptcy filing was the largest in history, as its assets far surpassed those of previous bankrupt giants such as WorldCom and Enron. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank at the time of its collapse, with 25,000 employees worldwide. The consequences for the world economy were extreme. Lehman’s ' fall contributed to a loss of confidence in other banks, a worldwide financial crisis and a deep recession in many countries. Lehman 's collapse roiled global financial markets for weeks, given the size of the company and its status as a major player in the U.S. and internationally. Many questioned the U.S. government 's decision to let Lehman fail, as compared to its tacit support for Bear Stearns, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in March 2008. Lehman 's bankruptcy led to more than $46 billion of its market value being wiped out. Its collapse also served as the catalyst for the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America in an emergency deal that was also announced on September 15.

There has been a debate for years on what caused the Financial Crisis in 2008 and if there was one main cause, or a series of unfortunate events that led to the crisis. The crisis began when the market was no longer funding many financial entities. The Federal Reserve then lowered the federal funds rate from 5.25% to almost zero percent in December 2008. The Federal Government realized that this was not enough and decided to bail out Bear Stearns, which inhibited JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns. Unfortunately Bear Stearns was not the only financial entity that needed saving, Lehman Brothers needed help as well. Lehman Brothers was twice the size of Bear Stearns and the government could not bail them out. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers bankruptcy caused the market tensions to become disastrous. The Fed then had to bail out American International Group the day after Lehman Brothers failed (Poole, 2010). Some blame poor policy making and others blame the government. The main causes of the financial crisis are the deregulation of banks and bank corruption.

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The historic average returns from 1950 to 1996 and from 1929 to 1996 are given In Exhibit 3. We chose the latter time period as we considered it would give us a more reliable estimate of the risk-free rate by discounting both the Second World War and the Great Depression. It is necessary to evaluate the expected length of the project and utilize a risk free rate applicable for the same time period. Ameritrade is investing $100 million dollars in technology, which is considered a long-term investment, in order to become the largest brokerage firm. We consider their

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYMerrill Finch Incorporated is a large financial services corporation. As a newly hired financial planner for the company, I have been assigned the task of investing $100,000 for a client. The investment alternatives have been restricted to five options: T-Bills, High Tech, Collections, U.S. Rubber, Market portfolio, and a 2-Stock portfolio.

This chapter is about the background of 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has a huge impact on US banking system and how the banks operate and how they are regulated after the financial turmoil. This financial crisis started with difficulty of rolling over asset backed commercial papers in the summer of 2007 due to uncertainty on the liquidity of mortgage backed securities and questions about the soundness of banks and non-bank financial institutes when interest rate continued to go up at a faster pace since 2004. In March 2008 the second wave of liquidity loss occurred after US government decided to bailout Bear Stearns and some commercial banks, then other financial institutions took it as a warning of financial difficulty of their peers. In the meantime banks started hoarding cash and reserve instead of lending out to fellow banks and corporations. The third wave of credit crunch which eventually brought down US financial system and spread over the globe was Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in August 2008. Many major commercial banks in US held structured products and commercial papers of Lehman Brother, as a result, they suffered a great loss as Lehman Brother went into insolvency. This panic of bank insolvency caused loss of liquidity in both commercial paper market and inter-bank market. Still banks were reluctant to turn to US government or Federal Reserve as this kind of action might indicate delicacy of

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