Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Could you give me your opinion on Laurentian Bank of Canada? Thank you.

Article Excerpt

A: Laurentian Bank of Canada, $54.27, Toronto symbol LB (Shares outstanding: 33.9 million; Market cap: $1.8 billion; www.laurentianbank.ca), is Canada’s eight-largest publicly traded bank, with total assets of $43.1 billion. Laurentian Bank is mainly focused on operations in Quebec and Ontario. Roughly 53% of its loans are in Quebec and 33% in Ontario. In late 2015, the bank appointed Francois Desjardin as the new CEO. Desjardin produced a 7-year strategic plan, aimed at achieving higher growth and better profitability for the bank. It calls for a doubling in the size of Laurentian between 2015 and 2022 with interim targets set for 2019. The first interim target is to grow loans to business customers by 60% of their 2015 level and residential mortgages through independent brokers by 50%. This implies an additional $5 billion of commercial loans and $4.3 billion of residential mortgage loans by 2019. In June 2016, Laurentian bought U.S.-based CIT Group Inc.’s Canadian equipment financing and corporate financing business for roughly $1…