Has First of America's Expansion Helped It Better Achieve Its Goals?

Abstract

This paper examines important factors that should describe how effective First of America Bank Corporation has been in accomplishing it's goals. First of America has employed an aggressive, yet conservative acquisition strategy. In fact, in 1992 First of America had a six year asset growth rank of 13 (of all bank holding companies with assets over $5 billion). First of America's growth has been indisputable. For this reason, the focus of this paper is how this expansion has affected the attainment of First of America's goals. This paper examines four major objectives crucial to the recent as well as the continued success of First of America. First, a commitment to stockholders is critical to the prosperity of FOA. Second, FOA strives to assure the continued satisfaction of its customers. Third, the commitment to the employees is also important. Last, FOA has made a special dedication to community banking. Furthermore, the economies of scale factor is examined, as it pertains to bank holding companies. Section I presents information concerning First of America's objectives, its past growth, how the expansion has affected the achievement of First of America goals, as well as how scale economies have contributed to the realization of those goals. Sections II and III describe the internship portion of my SIP. Section II describes my training and job responsibilities. Section III relates my internship to my past course work and how it will benefit me in the pursuit of my career goals.