People walk past a Royal Bank of Scotland office in London on Feb. 6, 2013.Neil Hall/Reuters
First, Toronto-Dominion Bank chief executive officer Ed Clark poured icy water on speculation that his bank might buy branches put up for sale in the U.S. by Royal Bank of Scotland. Now it appears the one other Canadian bank that might have been interested, Bank of Montreal, is also nowhere to be seen.
RBS is looking at selling its Citizens Financial Group Inc. operations in the U.S., a bank worth something on the order of $12-billion (U.S.).
There were reports that TD was interested, but it didn't make much sense, and Mr. Clark has said as much lately. There had also been some speculation from analysts that if TD were to go ahead, it could perhaps cut the cost by splitting up Citizens with BMO.
Now Bloomberg reports that there are multiple bidders for the Chicago branches of Citizens, the ones that BMO would really want to solidify its Midwest base. And guess what? None of the five names is BMO.