Eureka Case 30 min Undergrad

Tres Banderas

You are Lucía Olabarría-Mendaro, 44, Chief People Officer at Banca Iberoatlántica, a Madrid-headquartered retail bank that has spent eighteen months acquiring two regional franchises. The integration is now your problem.

The situation

Banca Iberoatlántica was built by stitching together three franchises: the Madrid HQ legacy bank (2,400 staff, regulated by the Banco de España, branch-led product distribution), Banco do Tejo (820 staff, Lisbon, formerly state-owned, recently privatized, conservative credit culture), and Banco Andino-Cundinamarca (610 staff, Bogotá, founder-led mid-market commercial bank acquired from the Restrepo-Posada family). The €148M synergy case the board signed off on assumes a single operating model by month 36. Month 18 is now.

The first six months of integration produced a unified core banking platform and shared finance reporting. The next stage — sales process, performance management, branch operations, customer-segmentation playbook — is where the cultures collide. Madrid wants standardization. Lisbon thinks Madrid is reckless. Bogotá thinks both are slow. Three senior regional managers have signaled they may leave if "Madrid-ization" continues. The CEO, Álvaro Solórzano-Bermúdez, wants your one-page recommendation in twelve days, before the November board meeting.

Your job in this case: read the cultural diagnostic across the three sites, model how integrative pressure trades against subsidiary trust and synergy capture, and commit to one of three integration postures. The board is reading for cost realism. The regional managers are reading for whether their teams will still exist in 24 months.

The decision

Three integration postures

  • A · Integrate to HQ (one bank, one playbook)
  • B · Federate (three banks, one balance sheet)
  • C · Asymmetric (same destination, three routes)

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