Butterfield to acquire control of CIBC Caribbean in $1.8b deal

The Bank of N.T. But­ter­field & Son Lim­it­ed has an­nounced an agree­ment to ac­quire CIBC’s 91.7 per cent in­ter­est in CIBC Caribbean Bank Lim­it­ed in a trans­ac­tion val­ued at US$1.794 bil­lion.

The deal will com­bine the two bank­ing and wealth man­age­ment com­pa­nies in­to an in­sti­tu­tion with ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$29 bil­lion in as­sets.

Ac­cord­ing to a joint re­lease is­sued to­day, the trans­ac­tion is ex­pect­ed to strength­en cor­po­rate, per­son­al and wealth man­age­ment ser­vices across the Caribbean and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­tres.

But­ter­field said clients could ben­e­fit from im­proved cross-bor­der pay­ment pro­cess­ing, ex­pand­ed con­sumer and mer­chant bank­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal bank­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

The com­pa­ny al­so con­firmed it would main­tain CIBC Caribbean’s op­er­a­tional foot­print, in­clud­ing its re­gion­al head­quar­ters in Bar­ba­dos.

But­ter­field chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Michael Collins said the ac­qui­si­tion would ex­pand the bank’s re­gion­al reach and di­ver­si­fy its op­er­a­tions.

“Since But­ter­field’s 2016 list­ing on the NYSE, we have suc­cess­ful­ly grown and en­hanced prof­itabil­i­ty through bank and trust ac­qui­si­tions. This deal com­bines two sto­ried and com­ple­men­tary banks, with sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal scale ad­van­tages and time-ho­n­oured cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships in their re­spec­tive core ju­ris­dic­tions.”

He added: “The trans­ac­tion will of­fer both scale and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to the ben­e­fit of all stake­hold­ers, po­si­tion­ing But­ter­field as a lead­ing in­de­pen­dent bank and wealth man­ag­er op­er­at­ing across in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­tres and at­trac­tive Caribbean mar­kets. I look for­ward to wel­com­ing our tal­ent­ed new col­leagues and val­ued clients.”

CIBC Caribbean chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mark St. Hill said the merg­er would build on the bank’s long­stand­ing pres­ence in the re­gion.

“For our clients, em­ploy­ees and com­mu­ni­ties, this com­bi­na­tion brings to­geth­er two or­gan­i­sa­tions with shared val­ues and a com­mon fo­cus on re­la­tion­ship bank­ing, in­no­vat­ing and com­mu­ni­ty im­pact. We look for­ward to build­ing on our lega­cy as the re­gion’s cham­pi­on in fi­nan­cial ser­vices.”

CIBC pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Har­ry Cul­ham al­so praised the re­gion­al bank’s lead­er­ship.

“The en­tire CIBC Caribbean team led by Mark St. Hill has built a strong, client-fo­cused bank across the re­gion, and we look for­ward to re­al­is­ing the strate­gic ben­e­fits of this trans­ac­tion to de­liv­er more for all stake­hold­ers.”

Un­der the agree­ment, But­ter­field will ac­quire CIBC In­vest­ments (Cay­man) Lim­it­ed, the hold­ing com­pa­ny for CIBC’s stake in CIBC Caribbean, and lat­er launch a manda­to­ry of­fer for the re­main­ing shares held by mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers.

The trans­ac­tion is ex­pect­ed to close in the first half of 2027, pend­ing share­hold­er and reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.