Did you hear today’s morning news about JPMorgan Chase buying Bears Stern for $2 a share in a hasty deal put together and finalized on a Sunday evening?
I think that this makes it tough for the other large financial institutions to maintain their market capitalization and maybe even their market share.
In the course of just minutes, I heard a lot of speculation:
“This is the beginning of the bottom, we’ll see things getting better.”
“This is the tip of the iceberg, we’ll see things getting much worse.”
How do you manage expectations with so much speculation? ’
Today the fed is cutting interest rates again, the euro is at an all time high against the dollar. Yen fluctuations are confusing. The old tried and true, “Don’t sell during the panic… the only ones who lose are those who sell!” sounds good, until a large financial institution has to sell at the bottom to avoid bankruptcy.
So how do the marketing strategists grow business during this cycle? I guess JP Morgan Chase sees it as an opportunity to grow market share. Other financial institutions may focus on just maintaining market share.
Last Thursday the Bears Stern CEO was quoted as saying everything is stable. Even this morning, their website has this nice chart on the page under the widget link called “Safety of Customer Assets.”
The home page did announce that their earnings announcement scheduled for today will not occur.
So how do financial institutions get the trust back? How do you maintain brand equity in the face of such rapid change? What are the implications for the industry?
