Financial institutions provide service as intermediaries of the capital and debt markets. They are responsible for transferring funds from investors to companies, in need of those funds. The presence of financial institutions facilitate the flow of money through the economy. To do so, savings are pooled to mitigate the risk brought to provide funds for loans. Such is the primary means for depository institutions to develop revenue. Should the become inverse, firms in this arena will offer additional fee-generating services including securities underwriting, and prime brokerage.
Corporate valuation
Relative metrics : Price/Equity Price/Book Value
Use Equity Multiples (as opposed to Enterprise Multiples). To consider how valuing a Financial Institution's balance sheet is different from a non-Financial firm, consider how an industrial firm wields capital machinery (asset) and the loans (liabilities) it used to finance that asset. The line is blurred in Financial Institutions, which must hold deposit accounts (liabilities) to fuel the issuance of loans (assets). The same accounts are considered loans as they are held in ownership not of the bank, but of the individual client.
Dividend Discount Model : Earnings-per-share
Dividends-per-share
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Model : You'll need the FCFE (Free Cash Flow for Equity), which is the amount of money that is returned to shareholders. Calculate an FCFF (Free Cash Flow to the Firm): EBIT (1-tax rate) -Capital Expenditures+ (Depreciation & Amortization) - (Net increase in working capital)= FCFF
FCFF-Debt+Cash=FCFE
Use the Capital Asset Pricing Model, not the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (for the same reasons one uses Equity Multiples in relative valuation) to determine the cost of equity (the return required by shareholders to make the decision to invest in a financial institutions)
Excess Return Model : A model where valuation is expressed as the sum of capital invested currently in the firm and the present value of dollar excess returns that the firm expects to make in the future

In most English common law jurisdictions there is a Bills of Exchange Act that codifies the law in relation to including and this Act contains a statutory definition of the term banker: banker includes a body of persons, whether incorporated or not, who carry on the business of banking' (Section 2, Interpretation). Although this definition seems circular, it is actually functional, because it ensures that the legal basis for bank transactions such as do not depend on how the bank is organised or regulated.
The business of banking is in many countries not defined by statute but by common law, the definition above. In other English common law jurisdictions there are statutory definitions of the business of banking or banking business. When looking at these definitions it is important to keep in mind that they are defining the business of banking for the purposes of the legislation, and not necessarily in general. In particular, most of the definitions are from legislation that has the purposes of entry regulating and supervising banks rather than regulating the actual business of banking. However, in many cases the statutory definition closely mirrors the common law one. Examples of statutory definitions:
"banking business" means the business of receiving money on current or deposit account, paying and collecting cheques drawn by or paid in by customers, the making of advances to customers, and includes such other business as the Authority may prescribe for the purposes of this Act; (Banking Act (Singapore), Section 2, Interpretation).
"banking business" means the business of either or both of the following:
receiving from the general public money on current, deposit, savings or other similar account repayable on demand or within less than [3 months] ... or with a period of call or notice of less than that period;
paying or collecting cheques drawn by or paid in by customersSince the advent ofElectronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale), direct credit, direct debit and internet banking, the cheque has lost its primacy in most banking systems as a payment instrument. This has led legal theorists to suggest that the cheque based definition should be broadened to include financial institutions that conduct current accounts for customers and enable customers to pay and be paid by third parties, even if they do not pay and collect cheques