Macquarie Bank to Acquire Canada Broker Orion
Australian investment bank Macquarie Bank will buy Canadian investment and brokerage firm Orion Financial for about C$147 million (US$146 million) in cash and stock.
Macquarie said the employee-owned Orion, which specialises in the resources sector, will be a good fit with Macquarie's broader global resources strategy.
It said the impact of the acquisition on Macquarie's Tier-1 capital ratio is expected to be limited.
Orion, which employs about 130 people mostly based in Toronto, earned a pre-tax income of C$41 million in the fiscal year ended March 31.
"We are particularly attracted to the experienced and successful team at Orion," Nicholas Moore, global head of Macquarie's investment banking group, said in a statement.
"Our objectives in acquiring Orion are firstly, to round out our global resources investment banking business and secondly to extract maximum advantage from combining their successful Canadian operations in equity underwriting, sales, trading and research with the scale and global reach of Macquarie Securities," he added.
Macquarie Bank, which has been aggressively pushing into overseas markets, now earns about half of its income from international operations.
In its recent operational briefing, Macquarie Bank said it was looking at possible acquisitions of small investment banks in Europe.
Earlier this year, Macquarie bought former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's boutique investment bank for an undisclosed sum.
Macquarie Bank shares were up 2.6% at A$82.34, broadly in line with the gains in financial services sector. Still, the stock is down about 17% from its all-time high of A$98.64 reached in May.
