Assignment: Essential Lessons from the US Financial Crisis Paper
The midterm paper is an analysis of a financial institution that had significant problems during the Financial Crisis. You can choose to write the paper on any of the financial institutions listed below. The list includes companies from a range of countries.
Late papers will lose a letter grade every day that they are late!
The paper should be a maximum of 1,200 words and should cover the following four topics:
I. What is your key lesson from your evaluation of the company? Please begin your paper with the key lesson in the first paragraph of your paper. For example (and this is only an example; it is not meant to be a template): XYZ Company failed because it followed an aggressive growth strategy without building out a robust risk management structure and without timely regulatory oversight. The key lesson is that aggressive strategies need internal and/or external constraints to avoid potentially fatal excesses.
II. What was the company's business model and strategy before the problems arose, e.g., what were the company's main products? In which geographies did it operate? In which areas was it growing the fastest? Was it growing organically, through acquisitions, or both?
III. What went wrong? When thinking about what went wrong, we encourage you to use the framework we presented at the first class and to choose the 2-3 areas that you believe represent the biggest errors by management. You may find that there were problems in all these areas but given the word count limit, you won't be able to cover all of them, so choose the most important ones.
i. Strategy
ii. Capital allocation
iii. Risk management
iv. Corporate culture
v. Succession planning
IV. What happened to the company, i.e., was it bailed out by the government, acquired, filed for bankruptcy, etc.? Please include information on what happened to key stakeholders, i.e., management, shareholders, bondholders, depositors, etc.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
i) The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
ii) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
iii) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.