Citizens Hunts for Florida Acquisition Targets After Deal Spree

Citizens Financial Group Inc. is mulling the acquisition of a wealth manager or even a lender in Florida following a deal spree by the bank last year, Chief Executive Officer Bruce Van Saun said.

“In Florida, we’re just trying to get really smart on the market,” Van Saun said in an interview Thursday at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “We’re poking around, talking to people, turning over rocks. Something may turn up.”

The state is the “gleam” in his eye, he said.

The Providence, Rhode Island-based bank is preparing to unveil a wealth office in Naples after it opened a similar location in West Palm Beach last year. The bank’s acquisition of 80 U.S. branches from HSBC Holdings Plc in 2021 also gave it six locations in the Miami area.

“Florida’s such a big state,” Van Saun said. “To have now eight outposts in Florida is good, but probably not enough.”

The push into Florida follows an aggressive run of dealmaking by the bank last year meant to strengthen its capital-markets business and establish a substantial retail presence in the New York area. That includes the acquisition of Investors Bancorp Inc., which the Federal Reserve approved earlier this week.

That transaction was among $77.6 billion of bank tie-ups in 2021. The need to scale up to keep pace with Wall Street titans and a challenging lending environment helped drive the combinations.

Van Saun cautioned on a Bloomberg Television appearance earlier Thursday that the bank wouldn’t search for deals as aggressively as it had last year. Even so, the company is “still on the hunt” for a wealth manager, he said.

Florida isn’t the only place the bank is looking to expand, with Van Saun describing interest in increasing staffing in California and Texas. But expanding the workforce isn’t without its difficulties.

“Associates, analysts, people that are age 25 to early 30s, that area has been a challenge to hold onto all last year,” Van Saun said, adding that the bank adjusted salaries and offered more vacation time to retain employees. “The investment banks just suck these people up.”

Max Reyes reports for Bloomberg News.

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