Its title has lost in the heels almost 10

Hunting is open and it is fierce! Société Générale has to make charges for the benefit of Citigroup on the Guangdong Bank folder. Major international bankers now fighting the campaign for a single game: the banking agency. For several months now, most of them made the extension of their retail banking international one of the cornerstones of their strategy. For relay of growth, they see the way to ensure their future development. Unexpected fortune back to the oldest of the trades of the Bank. The evidence the cliché of the dusty window of Grandpa mostly lived. In modern banking, the network of agencies has become the platform from which major institutions deploy all of their skills in new markets.

To achieve their ends, major groups are willing to devote a significant part of their opulent profits, or even to seek their shareholders that they did little in recent years. At them three, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale is allocated more than 20 billion euros over the past two years. They are not alone. Each month brings its batch of ads everywhere in the world. Even Deutsche Bank, but prepared in 2000 to shed its entire turn to the financial markets, is converted. Last summer, the German group bought two banks retail for EUR 1 billion.

Several factors contribute to this hunt to networks. To begin, the bankers, who are struggling for years to optimize the performance of their agencies on national markets hyperconcurrentiels in France first six establishments concentrated 90 of deposits saw an unhoped-for chance: the ability to export a model that has proven its new markets, less sophisticated or offering great development prospects, or even both simultaneously.

The game worthwhile, particularly in emerging countries. Like the industrial groups, large banks can hope to gather the fruit of a growing bankarisation, and limited cost. At Société Générale, it is estimated that the risk borne the title of the detained in Russian Rosbank, promising but risky investment 20 represents 1.20 euro per share, or less than 1 of the price of title. Foothold on more mature markets also presents certain attractions. Italian retail banking tariffs, for example, justify the appetite of the major European groups for the boot. They are among the highest in Europe, the French double.

Investors follow the bankers. They see in the takeover of a retail banking limited risk. They the prefer in any case of adventurous repurchases of banks to random results, considered exorbitant price and certainly significant cost synergies but often offset by losses in revenue as important by virtue of the brain hemorrhage that follows. The enlargement of the pole Bank retail is also seen as a means of smoothing out the performance of mainstream banks. A faculty appreciated when market activities decrease. Besides that the network remains a significant market for "factories" that are funding and Investment Bank and asset management.

Before such unanimity, understand the willingness that the actors Bank, large or small, to participate in the gigantic part of current hunting. As far as financial forests have rarely been as countrysides, they will no doubt not very long. The movement of privatization or opening of the capital of the financial sector in many emerging countries will endure a time. For the bankers, it is therefore essential to increase catches in the promising countries until the source dry up. This explains that candidates for the redemption of Bank network in ex-Eastern Europe, in Russia, in the Mediterranean or in Asia (mainly China) scramble. Last loop record to date, the privatisation of the Egyptian Bank of Alexandria and its 188 agencies drew 13 contenders. The establishment, by Sanpaolo IMI, went to a dizzying price (EUR 1.6 billion for 80 of the capital), higher than the most optimistic estimates half!

To escape this competition has become fierce, one solution: to tackle larger prey. Is to have the means. This is what made the Spanish Santander with the British Abbey and UniCredit Italian with German HVB. The issue was to hand over a major significant network in a European country (to which is added an enviable positions in Eastern Europe for HVB). At the beginning of the year, BNP Paribas made with Italian BNL. But, also, prices begin to fly. The title of the British Standard Chartered, implanted everywhere in Asia and coveted by many colleagues, exchange traded around 18 times its profits...

However, such operations should multiply in the coming years. First Brussels growing pressure on national guardianship authorities because creates opportunities in the European Union. The redistribution of current cards on the Italian banking market is the evidence. Then, because of very large players could get out of the wood. To fuel its growth, Bank of America, which is primarily a retail bank, must get out of the United States where it has now reached the legal ceiling of 10 of deposits.

But success is not assured. And this regardless of the size of the target. To fill their bag, institutions must rapidly project their strength. They must have internal management teams provided enough to ensure the integration of the new subsidiary while pursuing the efforts undertaken elsewhere. From this point of view, some appear to be better armed than others. The other pitfall is the price. Markets are not ready to endorse any operation. Dexia has made the experience in the announcement of the resumption, deemed expensive, Denizbank Turkish. Its title has lost in the heels almost 10. However, when diving from the title, the sanction can be immediate: moving from the status of Hunter to prey.