The Three Strategic Business Units of the Company - Essay Example

Arising men Jacob, Douglas, and Abraham formed a partnership called Feingold Brothers & Company in Baltimore that offered banking and financial services to merchants, individuals, and institutions. They were conservative in their approach hence the firm remained unaffected by the 1929 depression. The company had also obtained memberships of NYSE, NASD, ASE and the CBO well after the 1929 banking debacle and therefore was largely unaffected by it.But that was when they decided to move out of general banking and concentrate on their core activity of merchant banking only.

By then they had expanded and established offices in New York, and other East Coast cities.By the eighties the firm had expanded substantially through mergers and takeovers over the years, and in 1987 it changed its name to Feigngold Investments Inc., and decided to move out of their conservative mould after the stock market crash. The period 1999-2000 was spectacular for Feigngold but by then they needed to upgrade in networking to cope with increasing and expanding business in order to serve its widespread customers through highly dispersed offices in highly competitive markets.

Despite there being approval from the owners for such an investment in networking as well as technology there appears to be strong resistance from managerial and supervisory staff who believe that the existing systems, that are outsourced and managed by a third party, are capable of delivering the desired information.The company had expanded on the back of a robust national economy that had become global by now. It had neglected to follow the best practices in management and had continued to rely on its traditional strength of personalized service.

As a result there were structural weaknesses that showed up during periods of high stress and strain in a particularly competitive and volatile financial environment. It has major problems in three main areas that need addressing quickly.