Page 4 - Barclays Bank (B) Teaching Note

Objectives

“‘people of the same trade seldom meet together, even
for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends

in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance

to raise prices’”

Adam Smith, 1776 (1)

Collusive behaviour may not be a unique phenomenon of

the modern banking system but Barclays certainly

engaged in such, through Libor and Euribor fraud, in an

attempt to engender greater profit but ended up eroding

public trust in the marketplace.

There are two primary objectives for this case study on

Barclays Bank.

1: The first objective is to build and develop an

appreciation of the impact the external environment has,

not only on the development of strategy but also on its

adaptation and response especially when the dynamics

of the environment change and implementation – the key

cause of company failure, falters. Building on this is an

appreciation of the internal environment and how it

combines with the external environment to support the

creation of a sustainable strategy.