CASE STUDY: CIBC Wood Gundy in Asia an Evolving Regional Strategy

CASE STUDY: CIBC Wood Gundy in Asia an Evolving Regional Strategy

CASE STUDY: CIBC Wood Gundy in Asia an Evolving Regional Strategy

Introduction

The current global economic environment is characterized by an intense process of internationalization triggered, among other factors, technological developments, the Improved telecommunications and infrastructure, trade liberalization international funding for new systems, the excess of supply over demand and acceleration lifecycle of the products in the geographical focus of some companies. This process flows to a growing internationalization market globalization, characterized mainly by a wider dissemination of the information that leads to increasing homogeneity in tastes and preferences consumers worldwide, as well as an increase in the number of processes integration, cooperation and business partnerships, with the adoption of an entrepreneurial oriented processes and performing global activities that enable the achievement competitive advantages.

International expansion can be considered from the perspective of the importance of the national economy and from the strengthening of the business itself. Globalization spreads very quickly conquering new markets and creates new opportunities. Detecting these opportunities and managing risks at the same time is one of the main tasks of an effective business. A business need to expand its operations in order to grow and prosper and the company has to prove its viability and relevance of its ability to generate business. In this paper I am going to discuss a case study of CIBC Wood Gundy in which the company has decided to expand. In an increasingly competitive environment it may be necessary to break down national barriers and jump expanding commercial management to an international stage.

Background

Before going into the detail of the case I would like to present a brief introduction of the Firm and its effective operations. CIBC also known as The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was considered as the ninth largest bank of North America and second largest financial institution of Canada. CIBC wood Gundy was established in 1988 having 1400 brokers operating in around 100 branches across Canada. It is basically retail brokage division of world market of CIBC. CIBC Wood Gundy is an integrated global investment firm operating in New York, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Toronto, and key cities across North American. The company has been effectively operating and recognized CIBC as one of the top firm (Abdullah, 2003). The company has been operating effectively and ranked on top for Sales and trading, global loan underwriting and syndication, derivatives, public and structured finance, economic research, and mergers and acquisitions.

Over the past few years, the company has taken aggressive decisions in growing its franchise and fortunately they had been successful too exceeding its net income of $500 million in 1996. Then gradually CIBC moved to Asia Pacific where CIBC wood Gundy operated under its own name (CEF) in Japan. It was a joint venture between Chenug Kong of Hong kong and CIBC. It has been almost 25 years this venture is effectively operating in Asia. Partnership of CIBC and CEF offered ...