Not enough M&A opportunities: BDO to focus on organic growth

Teresita Sy-Coson, chairperson of BDO (second from left), is shown with (from left) Nestor Tan, BDO president; Henry Sy Jr., BDO director; and Corazon de la Paz- Bernardo, BDO vice chairperson at the start of the bank’s annual stockholders’ meeting at Shangri-La Hotel in Makati, on April 20, 2012. With not enough banks to acquire, Sy-Coson said Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012, that BDO would focus on putting up more branches. INQUIRER PHOTO/ROMY HOMILLADA

Banco de Oro—which became the country’s largest bank mainly through the acquisition of other banks—is keen on expanding further over the short term, but this time by putting up more branches of its own.

Teresita Sy-Coson, chairperson of BDO, said Thursday the bank continued to look for more banks to acquire, but has yet to find any that is available for sale at present. As such, she said BDO plans to put up new branches as a means to grow.

“There is not much to acquire at the moment. We want to merge but nobody wants to merge with us, so we have no choice but to grow organically,” Coson said in a banking forum organized by the Asian Banker.

She said BDO plans to submit to the BSP applications for opening up new branches. These will have to be outside key cities of Metro Manila because of the branching restrictions imposed by the BSP in the said areas, she said.

Coson, who said that BDO became the country’s largest bank in terms of assets by accident, did not provide an exact number of branches BDO intends to put up over the short term, but said the bank is eager enough to put up “as many branches as we can.”

She said expansion is one way to take advantage of the large customer base that its parent firm, the SM Group, has.

BDO, however, is so far not interested in expanding operations offshore despite opening up of opportunities for Asian banks to expand markets.

Observers said that because of the move of crisis-stricken European banks to sell some of their assets in emerging markets to generate liquidity, Asian banks are given the chance to expand internationally to grab markets that European banks are leaving behind.

Coson, who was named one of the Top 50 most powerful women in Asia this year by Forbes magazine, said BDO wants to limit its expansion plans within the country.

“We are so far focused on the Philippines,” Coson said.

Earlier, BDO reported a net income of P5.83 billion in the first semester, up by 15 percent from nearly P5.1 billion in the same period last year.

The bank said it expected to hit at least P12.5 billion in net income for the full year, up by 19 percent from its last year’s profit of P10.5 billion.

Aided by its acquisition of other banks, BDO now has over 770 branches nationwide.

Some of its most important acquisitions were those of Equitable-PCI Bank and the Philippine subsidiary of United Overseas Bank (UOB) in the mid-2000s.

BDO, which Coson still considers “a new kid on the block” among banking industry players, recently became the country’s biggest bank in terms of assets, thanks largely to its acquisitions.

“We never planned it. It is by accident that we became number one,” Coson said.