(Bloomberg) -- National Bank of Canada is leaning into its domestic focus, with Chief Executive Officer Laurent Ferreira saying that “Canada’s our playground.”
The Montreal-based bank sees plenty of room to grow within the country and hopes to complete its planned acquisition of Edmonton-based Canadian Western Bank early next year, Ferreira said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Canadian Finance Conference in New York. That deal will increase National Bank’s physical footprint in Western Canada by six times, he said, adding that there’s also room for the firm to do more lending outside of its home province of Quebec.
“Canada’s our market. When we get outside of Canada, we make sure that it’s accretive to returns,” he said, pointing to its US structured-finance business as an example.
National Bank, the smallest of Canada’s six largest banks, has seen some of its peers face challenges with international investments. Toronto-Dominion Bank last week pleaded guilty to a raft of money-laundering charges in the US and will pay almost $3.1 billion in fines.
Investors have increasingly questioned whether forays into retail banking abroad are worth it, particularly as the outlook for Canadian personal and commercial banking has grown rosier in recent months. National Bank’s shares surged to a record after reporting strong quarterly results in late August, with some analysts citing its Canadian focus as an advantage.
“Beyond impressive numbers is Canadian bank investors’ sudden insatiable appetite for Canadian exposure, and National Bank has plenty of that,” Bank of Nova Scotia’s Meny Grauman wrote at the time. “That makes it a very hot commodity.”
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