The chief executive has closed the door on international acquisitions, but is still open to domestic expansion
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by Doug Alexander and Esteban Duarte
National Bank of Canada’s Chief Executive Officer Louis Vachon says he’s not a fan of acquisitions, yet he’d still consider a deal to expand the Montreal-based lender’s wealth management division domestically.
“Essentially all of our acquisitions in the last 12 years in Canada have been in the wealth management space,” Vachon said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Canada Fixed Income Conference in New York. “So on the wealth management space we continue to be interested -- but they have to make sense from a financial standpoint and from a cultural standpoint.”
Vachon reiterated that he isn’t looking to do further international acquisitions, after doing C$625 million ($475 million) of investments in African and Asian lenders in the past five years, including a takeover of Cambodia’s Advanced Bank of Asia Ltd. National Bank is focusing on expanding the Cambodian lender as well as its U.S. specialty finance division, Credigy, while looking to sell its African investments, Vachon said.
Despite his deal-making during his 12-year tenure, Vachon said he’s “very skeptical” of acquisitions and prefers building from within.
“I don’t like acquisitions: I feel they’re risky, they really take a lot of time and attention, sometimes out of proportion to the financial impact they can potentially have,” Vachon said. “Our team knows that when they bring an acquisition thing to me it has to be a pretty damn good thing, because my first thing I’ll say is, ‘No, don’t bother me.’”
“I want my team to focus on organic growth, and capital management,” Vachon said.
