A single mother working in investment banking puts in fewer hours than her colleagues. When she is up for promotion, her boss says she is putting in the hours. He believes she will be fired unless he lies.

This case deals with efforts by HSBC, one of the two largest banks in the world by market capitalization, to develop a wholesale banking franchise that can effectively challenge those of major universal bank competitors such as Citigroup, as well as dominant “monoline” firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

This case examines the dramatic growth of the Vanguard group. It specifically examines the value logic that drove this growth.