Manulife Place Renovations | 145.99m | 36s | AIMCo | MdeAS

What do you think of this project?

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occidentalcapital said:
executive and operations - from press release.
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And can you tell me exactly what that means? How many executives? For how long? Are new executive roles going to still run through Edmonton or are they now legacy roles until the current executives retire?

Again, that could mean a lot and is typically from my experience the vague statement equivalent of "we care for our employees"
 
ChazYEG said:
I don't see anything that indicates that this will happen. National Bank seems to be planning on maintaining the course for CWB for the foreseeable future, so I don't see why this would be the case, for Manulife
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Lots of wild speculation here about all kinds of things some of which have already been contradicted. National Bank is buying CWB to expand its modest western presence, not contract it, so it could well be this move goes ahead.
 
tkoe_ said:
For me the bigger problem is market consolidation. Between this and the RBC takeover of HSBC, there will be even less competition in the banking sector. Doesn't seem great in the long run.
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Yes, but I suppose better than having one of the big 5 buy it. In some ways this helps boost National Bank to compete against them with more of a western presence.

So overall the loss of HSBC was bigger, but banking in Canada is definitely being consolidated now and I don't see anyone new coming in to compete against the behemoths in the near future.
 
I would be AMAZED if the gov’t approves this.

There is a lot of history of deep sixing mergers in Canada’s already concentrated banking system.
 
ATB Financial should buy CWB out and then ATB Financial should be sold off to Albertans and BColumbians. HO stays put.. My response to a post on SS.

“
Quote:
Originally Posted by YegFan View Post
just like other acquisitions, they will eventually vacate Edmonton and set up shop in other cities. While CWB is small, it is a major tenant in downtown Edmonton and one that is not easy to replace over the years.
Started in Edmonton. "In 1988, the Bank of Alberta merged with Western & Pacific Bank to form Canadian Western Bank (CWB)." "When the bank commenced operations in 1984 it was led by Canadian Business Hall of Fame member Dr. Charles Allard[1][3] and Eugene Pechet,[1][3][4] starting with three employees working out of a boardroom located in one of Pechet's hotels in Edmonton, Alberta.[4] The Government of Alberta supported the newly formed Bank of Alberta by investing in 5% of its shares.[5]

Wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Alberta

Too bad ATB Financial was not put on the market by the UCP before CWB was shopped around. Then there would have been some muscle in a Western based bank.
'n March 2019, Finance Minister Joe Ceci revealed the Government of Alberta had received a detailed offer from Scotiabank to purchase ATB Financial; however, the amount offered to privatize ATB was not provided by Ceci.[67] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATB_Financial “
 
I don't think selling ATB to Scotia or some other big bank would have helped Canadian Western Bank, but perhaps that is not what you mean.

Of course there has been a different government now for some time since Ceci was the Finance Minister, so I am surprised selling of ATB did not come up again more seriously since then.

But maybe CWB wasn't really that interested in buying ATB or it would have been too much of a stretch given its size. Now, if there is no other remaining Alberta bank to buy it, then the sale of ATB becomes even more unlikely.

If instead you privatize it, you could lose control with what happens after, so it could end up eventually owned by one of the big 5 eastern banks whose large masses tend to gravitationally capture everything. Years ago we used to have two fair sized phone companies headquartered in Edmonton, after privatization now there are none.
 
This is not going to end well. National paid top dollar for CWB and will need to realize synergies asap. All duplicated corporate type positions will likely be eliminated (think treasury, accounting, etc). I can see a lot of people being packaged out. I think the jobs will bleed over time until we are left with the more relationship type positions, like commercial bankers who deal in the local market. This will be sad, as of course these are above average paying jobs that will vanish. And also mean even less opportunities available for local talent. I’d be happy to be wrong
 
edm13 said:
This is not going to end well. National paid top dollar for CWB and will need to realize synergies asap. All duplicated corporate type positions will likely be eliminated (think treasury, accounting, etc). I can see a lot of people being packaged out. I think the jobs will bleed over time until we are left with the more relationship type positions, like commercial bankers who deal in the local market. This will be sad, as of course these are above average paying jobs that will vanish. And also mean even less opportunities available for local talent. I’d be happy to be wrong
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Give it probably 6-9 months from acquisition completion and it’ll be news of corporate hit squads at the Edmonton HQ targeting “redundancy”. CWB is probably the 2nd largest private sector employer in downtown. I don’t want to be a doomer but this feels like one of those things that still stings downtown in 10, 20 years.
 
edm13 said:
This is not going to end well. National paid top dollar for CWB and will need to realize synergies asap. All duplicated corporate type positions will likely be eliminated (think treasury, accounting, etc). I can see a lot of people being packaged out. I think the jobs will bleed over time until we are left with the more relationship type positions, like commercial bankers who deal in the local market. This will be sad, as of course these are above average paying jobs that will vanish. And also mean even less opportunities available for local talent. I’d be happy to be wrong
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National is basically paying the same as their own P/E ratio. One could easily argue CWB, which is consistently fairly profitable was currently very undervalued in the market, so they took the opportunity and snapped it up.

Also, as I understand this is being funded by shares not debt, so no additional interest cost to National Bank, and so really no pressing reason to cut costs immediately. The whole reason for this purchase anyways is market expansion, not cost efficiencies. I feel given the distance and maybe cultural differences between where National's head office is and here it would probably make sense to keep as much here as possible.
 
David A said:
National is basically paying the same as their own P/E ratio. One could easily argue CWB, which is consistently fairly profitable was currently very undervalued in the market, so they took the opportunity and snapped it up.

Also, as I understand this is being funded by shares not debt, so no additional interest cost to National Bank, and so really no pressing reason to cut costs immediately. The whole reason for this purchase anyways is market expansion, not cost efficiencies. I feel given the distance and maybe cultural differences between where National's head office is and here it would probably make sense to keep as much here as possible.
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Yeah so to your point, if national is paying its PE to acquire, then CWBs earnings are not going to be accretive on their own. So you need to find synergies. Anything that is repetitive like I mentioned in my first point, will be eliminated almost immediately I am sure. In a world where your shareholders expect ever increasing earnings quarter after quarter, this almost has to be the case. I hope you’re right but I think you will be wrong, especially as time passes! For any one who has a connection to their manulife lease, it would be interesting to hear from them if there have been any rumblings about what the future might look like
 
Is it...is it...is it happening?

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