Analysis of Commonwealth Bank's Acquisition of Bank West

Running Head: MERGERS AND ACQUISITION 1
MERGERS AND AQUISITION

MERGERS AND ACQUISITION 2
Overview
This report is a detailed analysis of the Commonwealth Bank and acquisition of Bank
West, along with the nature as well as the type of the transaction and the funds that were
involved in the deal. The acquisition of the Bank West was done on the basis of the Sale and the
Purchase method with UK based HBOS PLC. There were two major targets of the
Commonwealth bank of Australia namely the bank of Western Australia and St. Andrews
Australia. Commonwealth Bank is one of the most renowned banks operating in Australia and
has a wide range of services to cater the needs of the customers (Johnston. 2008).
Targets
The type of the take over the Commonwealth entered into was the sale and the purchase
method. Bank west was the Australian based retail bank which was primarily located in the
Western Australia. Since the year 2003 bank was HBOS’s wholly owned subsidiary Australia,
which is again wholly owned by HBOS PLC. The bank was indulged in providing the services
such as corporate banking, insurance, investment services, also the principal activities of the
Bank West was personal banking as well as the corporate banking.
When the proposition was decided the CBA’S offer for the Bank West business was low
in context of thee price to book ratios in comparison to the other Australian banking acquisition
happened (Fraende. 2008).

MERGERS AND ACQUISITION 3
However the financial strength of the company allowed it to acquire the Bank West Company.
The financial position of the
Commonwealth bank as o
30th June 2008 and 2009 has been
reflected with the help of this picture. This indicates that the npat of Commonwealth bank of
Australia is 4723 for the year ending 2009 whereas the same was $4791 in the year 2008, when
there was news of deal with the Bank west of Australia (Commonwealth bank of Australia,
2008).
Commonwealth Bank Bank west
Market capitalization 133.31 125.89