Evaluation of Barclays strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Evaluation of Barclays strategy - Essay Example When we see the Barclays’ acquisitions of Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisers in 1995, to be integrated with BZW Investment Management to form Barclays Global Investors; acquisition of Banco Zaragozano in 2003, one of Spain's largest private sector banking groups; acquisition of Juniper Financial Corporation, a US leading full-service credit card issuer in 2004; acquisition of major stake of Absa Group Limited in 2005, South Africa’s largest retail bank; and acquisition of Gerrard Management Services Limited in 2006, a leading UK private client wealth manager; we can say that Barclays has preferred a route of investment in capital purchase of other financial institutions, as a direct measure of expanding its global base, as well ass to establish its base more firmly in other countries, and to use the established customer base of other financial institutions for its advantage. This sort of strategy gives the additional management challenges to barclays of managaing an ever expanding customer and market base, not to mention the growing number of cemployees and branches and integrate its acquisitions into its own processes and culture. As far as its performance measurement goes with reapect to the global drivers and its financial performance, we can see from the company financial data that its strategy of growing has worked well for the company. The time for its new acquisitions to become an effective contributor has been quite small and has been able to show profits very early. The bank has shown repeated profits aver the entire time while acquiring new enterorises, which shows that the bank has performed admirably in keeping the acquisitions hampering its profits. As far as the global industry drivers go, the new wave in banking has been the retail banking and the emergence of global players. The banking laws have become stricter, while some parts of the financial world, i.e. some big players have started to become monopolies, while all along the time there has been a massive flow of new products for the customers. In all this, banks like barclays have a strategic advantage caused by their huge presence and its modern outlook. It is in a position that it can capture huge amount of new customers and its massive base is able enough to satisfy the growing customers requirements. Also the diversion of barclays into different sectors of financial world, other than typical banking, such as credit, invetsment, insurance etc gives it an edge over its competitiors, while at the same time does not couse too much burden on its original operations. Also its base is valuable for establishment in emerging markets. Thus barclays can be assumed to be in a key position to dominate the financial world. Q2 Compare and contrast the intended acquisition of ABN with that of the earlier acquisition of Banco Zaragozano , paying particular attention to the merger rationale and the motives in each case and the likely synergy gains resulting from the integration of ABN. The intended acquisition of ABN is similar in many points with the previous acquisition of Banco Zaragozano, with the key similarities in the dimensions of rationale, motives and gained synergies