Not all foreign banks entertain the idea of teaming up with a Philippine lender to widen their presence in the country. Last week, the chief executive of Malaysia-based Maybank Group, the parent company of Maybank Philippines, shrugged off the idea of acquiring a local bank to strengthen its domestic presence, saying it preferred “organic growth.”
“As of now, we don’t have plans [to acquire any local bank],” Datuk Abdul Farid Alias, chief executive of Maybank Group, said in a news briefing in Makati City.
Alias said Maybank would rather increase its branches, from the current 80-plus scattered across the Philippines.
Maybank Philippines president and chief executive Herminio Famatigan Jr. earlier said the bank was poised for further growth, as the sizable infrastructure investments and aggressive expansion done in the previous years were about to start paying significant dividends.
As of end-2014, the bank had 79 branches nationwide, of which 30 were in Metro Manila and the rest strategically located in key cities of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The bank had 94 offsite and on-site ATMs nationwide. MPI is a member of the Maybank Group, Malaysia’s regional financial services leader with an international network of over 2,200 offices in 20 countries.
The group offers an extensive range of products and services, which includes commercial banking, investment banking, Islamic banking, stock broking, insurance and asset management. Maybank is ranked as the fourth largest bank in asset terms in the Southeast Asian region.