---
title: "Bank of Montreal → Bank of the West"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/bank-of-montreal-buy-bank-of-the-west-2021"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2021"
---

# Bank of Montreal → Bank of the West

Bank of Montreal's $16.3bn purchase of Bank of the West from BNP Paribas, agreed in December 2021 and completed in February 2023, bought Canada's oldest bank a large foothold in California — and three years on BMO was still reshaping its US network to lift the returns.

An all-cash purchase from BNP Paribas adding more than 500 branches and extending BMO into California and the US west.

- **Acquirer:** Bank of Montreal (Canada)
- **Target:** Bank of the West (United States)
- **Value:** $16.3B
- **Announced:** December 2021
- **Completed:** February 2023
- **Sector:** Banking
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

BMO, founded in 1817, had built its US business around Chicago, starting with Harris Bank in 1984 and adding Milwaukee's Marshall & Ilsley, agreed in 2010. Bank of the West, founded in San Jose in 1874 and owned by BNP since 1979, had about $105bn of assets, $56bn of loans and $89bn of deposits, roughly 70% of them in California. On 20 December 2021 BMO agreed to pay $16.3bn in cash — $13.4bn net of about $2.9bn of excess capital at the bank, or about 1.5 times expected tangible book value. It would fund the price mainly from existing capital, including proceeds from selling its EMEA asset management business, plus about C$2.7bn of new equity. BMO projected pre-tax cost savings of about C$860m, 35% of Bank of the West's non-interest expenses, an internal rate of return of about 14%, and a footprint in 32 states with strong positions in three of the five largest US markets.

Approval took more than a year. BMO confirmed on 19 January 2023 that it had every regulatory approval it needed, and the deal completed on 1 February, bringing nearly 1.8m customers. Over the Labor Day weekend of 2023 the Bank of the West name was retired and both banks' accounts were converted into the renamed BMO Bank.

## What it left behind

Returns came slowly. In 2025 BMO set a target of a 12% return on equity for its US operations; by late July that year the figure stood at 8%. In October 2025 BMO agreed to sell 138 branches — in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Idaho, plus a few in Minnesota, Oregon and Illinois — to First Citizens Bank, which assumed about $5.3bn of deposits at a net premium of about 5%. BMO said it would open 150 branches over five years under a "California-centric" plan, and the sale completed on 4 September 2026. Coverage is not the same as scale in retail banking: an acquisition can buy a map of branches quickly, but the return depends on density where the buyer wants to compete, and BMO spent the years after closing redrawing that map.

Source: https://newsroom.bmo.com/2021-12-20-BMO-Financial-Group-accelerates-North-American-growth-with-strategic-acquisition-of-Bank-of-the-West