My Experience with the Council Form Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

My Experience with the Council Form - Essay Example The council helped me accept diverse opinions than before, in addition to understanding those who disagreed with me. During the session, I noticed that it was interesting to listen to others particularly those who had different opinions from mine, especially when they supported them with studies and pieces of evidence. My little voice was thinking on their reactions, telling myself that they could be either right or wrong. I did not have a problem listening because I listened to each and everyone in the group and realized that life is cool when we communicate to each other, as well as when we give each other an opportunity to argue and speak his ideas. To add to this, I discovered that, if one believes what he says and have evidence, then your conversation has a great effect on other participants in the group session and everyone will agree with you. I also learned from the controversial topic that we can all discuss and come up with a correct answer, although I did not expect such a topic and therefore, my opinion was not changed since I hate to hear or talk about it, though it was nice to hear people give their opinions on it. During the group meeting and group presentation, some of my strengths as a group participant were supporting my opinions with studies and pieces of evidence, showing that marijuana should be kept illegal. I was also the only member who was against marijuana, and therefore, my position was a specialist opinion. I played the role of trying to convince them in regards to marijuana risks, but at the same time respecting their views, though they insisted that they had to read and see more studies on its risks. However, they tried changing my views but they could not give me any strong and logic pieces of evidence either. I have learned a lot from the group sessions, like having to listen to each and everyone, in addition to, those who disagree with me and respect their opinions. During the preparation of our presentation, leadership emerged from our group, where Tom was elected to be the leader, where he led us effectively. The leadership was also shared, where Eric helped Tom in leading us as well as, helping each one of us. He was helpful as well as a good friend. There was also satisfactory leadership in our group session because we all got A’s. It was also easy for us to make decisions on how our presentation would be structured. This is because we respected and understood each other, which is very important in group work. If group members do not understand and respect each other, the group becomes disorganized in their final presentation. The consensus was easily reached because we all worked as a team although there were members with different views, we still maintained the friendship.  Ã‚  

Bank of America Acquisition of Merrill Lynch Essay

Bank of America Acquisition of Merrill Lynch - Essay Example The investing and securities industry in the United States is quite successful with its level of growth before the recession being astronomic over the past couple of years. The country maintained a distinct difference between commercial and investment banks before 1999. This in effect means that the industry enjoyed massive benefits as the banks concentrated only on certain banking activities without competing much with the players in the investment banking industry. On the other hand, the industry includes approximately 3000 companies which have total revenue of close to 200 billion dollars (Hoovers par 1). The investment banking industry is much concentrated with the first 50 major players accounting for close to 90% of the industry’s earnings according to Hoovers (par 1). The investment banks commonly target those who have property which include land, buildings and other fixed assets the main customers being the middle class (Perkins 14). Some of the main competitors of Bank of America in its acquisition of Merrill Lynch include Wells Fargo and Company, The Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated and JP Morgan Chase and Corporation, and Citigroup. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is considered the world’s largest brokerage having at least 15000 brokers and a client asset base of about 2.2 billion dollars. In this regard, it fairs competitively compared to its main competitors both in the investment and brokerage ventures. Bank of America in itself has remained for long the second most capitalized bank in the United States. The bank serves more than 150 countries and has relationships with many Fortune 500 companies (Matthew, Carrick and Dan 14). In terms of total revenue, the Bank of America is 5th largest in the USA. There are several small brokerage firms that are far less capitalized in the US which little threaten the establishment of the Acquisition. The main competitors in the market including Wells Fargo