Corporate Strategy Master Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Corporate Strategy Master - Assignment Example By July 2008 as a consequence, major banks and other financial institutions around the world had reported losses reaching $435 billion. The problem on sub-prime mortgages was exacerbated by the steady depreciation of the US dollar, whose value against the euro, for example, crossed the $1.48 threshold in November 2007 to settle at $1.50 (Phillips, 2007). While the US Federal Reserve showed no intention of intervening to strengthen the dollar, banks stopped issuing covered bonds and the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) hit a premium for treasury bills not seen since the dark days of the first oil crisis in 1987. The continued weakening of the US currency gave banks and financial institutions little incentive to sell dollars, completing the scenario for rising global inflation. Such a climate of uncertainty in the global economy, specifically in the banking sector, serves as backdrop for this paper as it examines the corporate strategies by which HSBC Holdings plc, one of the worl d's largest banking and financial services organisations, can emerge a winner through the use of appropriate models and tools of analysis. HSBC Holdings plc is the mother company of a wide array of banks and financial institutions that include the HSBC plc in UK; the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd. and Hang Seng Bank Ltd. in Hong Kong; HSBC Finance in France; the Household International and HSBC Bank USA NA in the US; HSBC Bank in Brazil; Grupo Financiero HSBC in Mexico; and the HSBC Private Banking Holding (Suisse) SA in UK, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Monaco, Luxembourg, Singapore and Channel Islands. The Group's corporate strategy finds expression in the marketing pitch attached to its logo that proclaims HSBC as "the world's local bank." This campaign to differentiate the HSBC brand was launched in 1999 and started to guide all banking operations in 2005. The strategy projects HSBC as a financing institution with an international pedigree and world-class expertise, which sophistication is nonetheless used for the full benefit of the smallest local clients and their communities. In effect, the HSBC based its strat egy not only on product leadership and operational excellence but also on customer intimacy, the three value disciplines that drive corporate strategy (Green, 2003). That sort of makes the Group a high-street bank that serves low-end clients as a matter of preference. The banking clientele composed of ordinary people is a market segment usually identified in an RFM analysis to formulate a firm's corporate strategy. RFM stands for recency, frequency and monetary value and is often conducted to analyse customer behaviours and define market segments. In essence, RFM analysis asks how recent and frequent are the transactions done for a particular