Bank of Nova Scotia signaled on Tuesday it is growing increasingly frustrated with the slow progress of its efforts to close its acquisition of a 20 percent stake in China's Bank of Guangzhou, and it opened the door to the possibility the deal might not go through.Scotiabank, Canada's No. 3 lender, announced the C$719 million ($728.36 million) transaction in September 2011, predicting at the time the deal would close at the end of that year.But the process of getting a final go-ahead has dragged on, and bank officials acknowledge they underestimated the difficulty of negotiating the multiple levels of government approvals in China. Last year, they stopped forecasting when the deal might close.Speaking at a conference in Toronto, Scotiabank Chief Executive Rick Waugh suggested the bank may have to find other investments for the equity it had raised for the Guangzhou acquisition.
The Bank of Nova Scotia (the Bank) is a diversified financial institution. Shares of BNS fell by 0.43% or $-0.25/share to $58.23. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $48.45 and as high as $59.18. On average, 420554 shares of BNS exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 167651.
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