National Bank CEO Sees M&A Helping Results as Trading Boom Cools
- Vachon sees private equity money, baby-boomer exits in Canada
- Bank’s fourth-quarter earnings top analysts’ estimates
Louis Vachon.
Photographer: Misha Friedman/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
National Bank of Canada Chief Executive Officer Louis Vachon expects an increase in mergers and acquisitions to bolster the company’s financial-markets business in the year ahead, propping up results as a boom in trading cools off.
Profit in National Bank’s financial-markets business rose 3% to C$209 million ($162 million) in the fiscal fourth quarter, helped by gains in fixed-income trading and corporate and investment banking, the company reported Wednesday. But the trading surge that fueled earnings earlier in the pandemic showed some cracks, with revenue from equities, commodities and foreign-exchange declining from a year earlier.