This researcher will identify and describe key environmental forces that have immediate strategic implications for Capital One. Identify and describe capabilities and weaknesses within Capital One that have immediate strategic implications. Define Capital One's corporate and enterprise-wide strategies and evaluate each for potential for continued success. Evaluate the strategic significance of Capital One's recent acquisitions. Describe the key strategic issues raised by the company's acquisition strategy. Evaluate Capital One's international position. Identify and describe major environmental forces that have immediate strategic implications for Capital One. Capital One Corporation is a bank holding company. Capital One provides a wide range of financial services to consumers. Capital One offers consumer and business loans, consumer deposit products, and Capital One Auto financing (Hitt, 2009). Since going public in 1994, Capital One has aggressively increased its market presence in the global arena. Capital One has diversified its portfolio by adding mortgages, home equity loans, auto financing and many other specialized consumer lending products. Capital One is well known for its personalized credit cards. This was done with the support of its information-based strategy (Hitt, 2009). The system uses sophisticated data mining techniques to match credit cards to target customers based on their credit scores. The IBS system would then divide the consumer into three categories depending on their FICO scores. The groups are super-prime (excellent credit history), prime (average credit history), and finally subprime (poor credit history). Capital One uses this system aggressively on board...... middle of paper... ...ortfolio offers various products and services to domestic and international clients. “The international subsegment consists of UK and Canadian credit card lending, Capital One's nationwide lending franchise expansion, and geographic diversification (Hitt, 2009). Capital One is dominant in the United Kingdom, where it is the seventh largest credit card issuer and among the top ten in Canada (Hitt, 2009). Capital One's international portfolio has grown and increased in value in recent years. In 2005, Capital One acquired a British stockbroking firm called Hfs Group to strengthen its position in the United Kingdom (Hitt, 2009). The international company competes with national and state banks for deposits and commercial loans. The company is not currently expanding, but will do so when it finds a market that shows growth opportunities