For the second time in less than two years the Dutch banking giant ABN Amro Holding NV will be retooling the branding of its U.S. banking subsidiaries - this time in a big way.
On Friday it said the 112-year-old Standard Federal Bank of Troy, Mich., which it bought eight years ago, will soon become LaSalle Bank Midwest. LaSalle Bank of Chicago, which ABN Amro bought in 1979 to get a foothold in the U.S. market, has $63 billion of assets; Standard Federal has $44 billion.
The name change "will unite our team under one brand and allow us to leverage the growing brand equity of LaSalle Bank," said Mark A. Hoppe, who is slated to become Standard Federal's chief executive April 1. The rebranding will occur shortly after he takes the helm, he said on a conference call Friday.
The company will not be merging the two units, which will continue to be indirect subsidiaries of ABN Amro through its U.S. holding company LaSalle Bank Corp. ABN Amro had three separately branded U.S. units until 2001, when it sold European American Bank of Uniondale, N.Y., to Citigroup Inc.
Analysts said Friday that the coming change may signal bigger ones.
"I suspect it's a step toward universal branding as ABN," said Simon Maughan, an analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. "If you look at UBS or HSBC, they've done this a couple of years ago. They use the local brand for a while; they then stick their own logo and name on."
Hayes Roth, vice president of worldwide marketing and business development at the Landor Associates branding firm, said that by retaining the LaSalle name ABN Amro is taking a costlier approach than some other big international banking companies. The British giant HSBC Holdings PLC and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are doing away with the local identities of banks they've acquired.
ABN Amro has made "sort of an expensive decision," Mr. Roth said, "but it's also a way to ensure you preserve any loyalty you have among your customer base."
A week ago ABN Amro introduced a global tag line, "Making More Possible." In October 2003, Standard Federal and LaSalle adopted ABN's logo and added references to the "ABN Amro Group" in marketing materials; executives then said they wanted to retain the banks' local identity while showing the connection to a global financial company.
Mr. Hoppe said ABN Amro's new tag line, combined with LaSalle's growth in the past two years, spurred the rebranding.
"There is terrific brand equity in Standard Federal," he said on a conference call with reporters Friday. "However, there has really been substantial growth at LaSalle Bank, both on a regional and a national basis."
LaSalle's leasing business has grown 20% and expanded into four additional cities in two years. LaSalle Business Credit, a national asset-based lending business, has also grown, and the bank has added six cities in two years to its regional commercial and commercial real estate lending business, he said.
Mr. Hoppe said the unified branding also puts the company in a better position to make acquisitions. ABN Amro reiterated last week that it is interested in U.S. deals, but has no immediate plans.
"We will be focusing our investments and acquisition targets on the Midwest, where we think that at some point in time it will become increasingly interesting to grow our market share," said Rijkman Groenink, ABN Amro's chairman, on a Feb. 7 conference call. "We have highly defendable market shares, but at some point in time in the future it could become opportune to acquire.
"At this moment," he added, "we are not contemplating any other acquisitions in the U.S., because we feel that price levels in our adjacent states are too high."
But Mr. Maughan said ABN Amro is in no position to make U.S. acquisitions.
"The driving factor in an acquisition is whether the parent can afford it," he said, "and the simple fact is the parent company cannot - their multiple is too low to go buy American banks."
ABN Amro is itself a subject of acquisition speculation, but Mr. Maughan called that "hogwash." Because it is so spread out and so diverse, ABN Amro is not an attractive takeover target, he said.
"It's a good time to put out a takeover story," Mr. Maughan said. "People are interested, and there has been a lot of takeover speculation across Europe."
