Assignment

The International Banking assignment is a Group project on Country Risk. It is worth 25% of your overall mark for this module.

Word Count: 1,500 words.

Your Group works for a leading UK-based International Bank, which is considering establishing an overseas subsidiary or acquiring a local bank in a country of your choice. You should prepare a Country Risk assessment for your chosen country. Your Report must begin with an Executive Summary that recommends either entry or non-entry to a country. Failing to include a recommendation in the Executive Summary will lower your grade. The Report should be forward-looking meaning you need to identify trends and developments using recent data.

The Report must contain sections on the following:

1. An Executive Summary prepared by the group explaining your recommendation

2. An economic profile of the host country (e.g. GDP; wealth; employment; fiscal condition; monetary policy; balance of payments; FDI flows etc)

3. The structure of the host banking sector (e.g. number of banks, types of banks, levels of concentration, over-banked or under-banked, trends over time etc)

4. Bank regulatory and supervisory practices in the host (e.g. key regulations, restrictions on foreign banks, implementation of Basel 3, deposit insurance, universal banking or not, severity of regulations and penalties for non-compliance etc)

5. Competitor analysis in host banking sector (e.g. performance indicators of competitors, strategies of leading players in the market etc)

6. An analysis of current political events in the host country (check the news! Not to include material from other sections.)

To help with data, the following databases are available from the World Bank and IMF web pages:

• Global Financial Development Database (access, depth, efficiency, stability)
• World Bank Regulatory and Supervisory Survey; International Debt Statistics
• Balance of payments and foreign investment data - see World Economic Outlook
• Central banks are another useful source of information
• The annual reports of individual banks are an excellent source of financial and strategic data and information. Databases like BankScope are another excellent source of bank-level data, which you can use to illustrate sections on the structure of the host banking sector and the competitor analysis.

Your Group Report will comprise five sections (in addition to the Executive Summary). It is the responsibility of each group to allocate the five sections to its members. The content of each section cannot change. A failure to answer any of the five sections, or the submission of an answer to another question, will result in a mark of zero for that section.

Requirements:

Only one electronic submission per group.

For the hard copy submission, please include five cover sheets with each of your names on. Electronic and hard copies must be identical.

Please note that plagiarism is a serious offence and is not tolerated. Extensions for assignments will not be granted unless accompanied by certifiable evidence of a genuine complaint or circumstance. Evidence must be presented to the module leader before the submission date.