This case traces the history of Goldman Sachs from its origins as it grows from a partnership to one of the most valuable franchises in the global securities industry and ultimately a listed corporation, and its transformation into a bank holding company under the regulatory oversight of the Federal Reserve.

In the spring of 2011, JPMorgan Chase realised that their synthetic credit portfolio (SCP), which represented less than 1% of the bank’s total assets, had grown to become more than half of the bank’s total risk. An article in the WSJ would soon make it public knowledge that the bank was in a difficult situation.

The case describes the launching of the KBC buyback fund, a mutual fund that aims to exploit the buyback anomaly first documented by Ikenberry, Lakonishok and Vermaelen(1995). It summarizes the empirical results of the study which show positive long-term excess returns after open market buyback programmes.

The case discusses the financial strategy of ING Direct, a telephone/internet retail bank that has been growing rapidly in eight countries. It presents both the deposit pricing strategy, and the asset allocation of the bank.