Who would acquire CS US IB division?

if the US banking arm of CS is acquired by another bank, who would it most likely be bought by? Would it make sense for a BB firm like GS to acquire to obtain CS levfin/FSG platform which is top of street? Or does it make more sense for a bank like Truist to acquire to expand IB capabilities.

Not sure which makes more sense since I am assuming acquiring the IB arm in US would be cheap for any other bank either way. Could also be a forced merger in which case who knows what bank would be involved. 

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Probably dilutive for a top bank like GS or MS to take on the entire team, especially with people leaving, and its balance sheet given the lower profitability, makes more sense for a bank where it would move the strategic needle significantly 

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When Barclays bought Lehman, they paid almost nothing for the actual business.  Nearly all of it was for the building and for the securities on the books.

That makes sense to me because as bank leaders are fond of saying, the assets go down the escalator every night.  There isn't a lot to buy.

Main reason Barclays paid something (not much) for the business was that there was strategic value in quickly becoming a real player in the US.  I don't know which foreign banks are looking to do that.  Nomura and SMTB are pretty far along I think, but maybe they'd have some interest.

 

If anyone would buy CS it would be UBS and it would be for the synergies in wealth management and asset management not IB. - UBS #1 in global wealth assets acquiring #3 in global wealth assets with lot's of overlap in geographies. Merging wealth and asset management platforms should provide plenty of synergies. The asset mgmt. and wealth businesses are stickier and less volatile. Both of these businesses benefit immensely from scale. IB was only 30% of UBS op income in 2021 in a year where the department obviously was overearning so it's not as big as you probably think to the overall company as wealth/asset mgmt were most of the rest of op income. Probably makes sense to consolidate both IB's and ER's into each other taking best teams/aspects from each. Obviously can cut a lot of back office and close duplicative office. HQ's in Switzerland are next door to each other and Swiss execs are probably friendly with each other, Zurich is not a big place, metro size puts it just in top 40 US metros so the execs and Swiss likely want to keep as many jobs in Zurich as possible which has better chance of happening this way.... I think it makes sense qualitatively but I haven't done a deep dive. 

 

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