The Bank of Nova Scotia’s mostly stock deal to buy Montreal’s Jarislowsky Fraser investment firm for $950 million will create the third-largest active money manager in Canada amid growing consolidation in the wealth management industry. Glen Gowland, Scotiabank’s senior vice-president and head of asset management, said the deal arose out of a long-standing working relationship with Jarislowsky Fraser. The iconic firm’s business is “complimentary,” and a formal tie-up will help Scotiabank diversify the mix of its wealth business, where earnings come primarily from retail, he added. Scotia currently has a small institutional footprint, and certainly relative to our size ... That’s something we wanted to bolster,” he said. The manager’s more than $40 billion in assets is comprised of roughly 70 per cent institutional and 30 per cent private wealth, he wrote.

Source: thestar February 12, 2018 13:52 UTC