I took my last three exams today. Whew! Am I glad they’re over…no more studying until Jan 8. All went well on the exams aside from the curve ball our marketing professor threw our way (had us do a marketing plan and analysis of JP Morgan USA for exam preparation and THEN asked only about the firm’s UK operations, which are completely different, on the exam …argh!).
Unless I made careless or silly mistakes I should have made it out okay. For those interested, here’s an excerpt of the questions posed on today’s exam:
- How would you characterize the structure of the banking industry in the US? Explain your answer and discuss how economic theory may be used to understand the operation of JP Morgan in this type of market structure. Distinguish between the firm’s operations as a retail and as a wholesale bank.
- Would a tighter fiscal policy reduce the US trade deficit bearing in mind its effects on the supply of the US government bonds? Justify your answer.
- JP Morgan has increased its credit card and home loan business. Most of these involve receipts at a floating interest rate. However, the funding for this obtained by JP Morgan issuing bonds on which it pays fixed rates. What are the risks in this for JP Morgan and how might it get rid of (or mitigate) such risks?
- With reference to the six operating segments which JP Morgan Chase target, discuss: 1) the criteria for judging a good market segmentation approach 2) whether this segmentation is a good one 3) other ways the market could be segmented giving examples
- Conduct a SWOT analysis on JP Morgan Chase as of 2006 within the UK market. What market opportunities does your analysis suggest for JP Morgan Chase to exploint in the coming year.
We are now free to think about our holiday trip–we fly out of Heathrow for Germany tomorrow at 1PM (our time). It will be nice to be out for a bit since G and I have both been frantic this Fall with work and school.
As luck would have it, though, school will never be too far from my thoughts as our Organizational Behavior (Organisatonal Behaviour for any Brits out there…I am learning!) professor has asked that we read a 400 page book during our holiday along with multiple case studies and other materials. Fun, fun!
We’ll do our best to post from the road as we make our way through Bavaria and beyond…
Happy Holidays to All!
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