After much speculation in recent years about its appetite for additional U.S. bank M&A, TD offered ~US$13.4 bln in cash to buy First Horizon Corporation (FHN)[1], a Tennessee-based regional bank, in late February, almost 15 years since its last “large” U.S. bank acquisition – Commerce Bancorp. In our view, the acquisition offers many strategic benefits given FHN: (i) is an optimal size, adding material scale with…
Commentary: HFIN
Canadian Banks: 2022 starts with M&A; Recovery Continues (fQ1 in Charts)
2022 is off to a noteworthy start for the Canadian banks, with long-awaited M&A announcements and another strong earnings season. In December, we posted our outlook for the year, “Canadian Banks: Five Possible Drivers in 2022”, in which we stated that the cyclical recovery was not yet over. We identified five factors that we expected would influence bank share prices during 2022: (i) reserve releases, (ii)…
Canadian Banks: BMO’s High Risk, High(er) Reward Acquisition of BoW
Bank of Montreal recently announced the acquisition of BNP Paribas’ U.S. retail banking subsidiary, Bank of the West (BoW) for ~C$20 bln – the largest acquisition in Canadian banking history. The transaction is very different from prior acquisitions made by the Canadian banks and is further complicated by the fact that BoW is not publicly traded (wholly owned by BNP), so most Canadian investors have limited…
Hamilton ETFs Launches Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Financials ETF
TORONTO, January 26, 2022 – Hamilton Capital Partners Inc. (“Hamilton ETFs“) is pleased to announce the launch of the Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Financials ETF (“HFIN“). HFIN seeks to replicate, to the extent reasonably possible and before the deduction of fees and expenses, a 1.25 times multiple of the Solactive Canadian Financials Equal-Weight Index. HFIN has closed the offering of its initial units. Units of the ETF…
Canadian Banks: Five Possible Drivers in 2022 (Q4 2021 in Charts)
HCAL Ends Year #1 as the Top Performing Canadian Bank ETF; Hamilton ETF AUM Exceeds $1 bln Before we discuss our outlook for 2022, we wanted to highlight that the Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Bank ETF (HCAL), the top performing bank ETF since its launch in October 2020. Year-to-date (2021), HCAL is outperforming equal weight/yield weighted strategies by 9% and covered call strategies by 14-17%. As of November…