Manulife Financial Corp. of Toronto said Friday that it may exceed its cost-cutting targets for merging the recently purchased John Hancock of Boston and prefers to focus on a smooth integration rather than doing more big deals soon.
Peter Rubenovitch, Manulife's chief financial officer, was quoted by the Reuters news service as expressing confidence the company would "meet and probably exceed our targeted run-rate synergies of $255 million by 2006."
Dominic D'Alessandro, Manulife's president and chief executive officer, told analysts during a conference call, "It would be bordering on irresponsible to undertake another major [deal] at this time."
Mr. D'Alessandro had told the company's annual meeting that Manulife would continue to take an opportunistic approach to new purchases. "Fill-in" deals would be to boost existing businesses and have a ceiling price of up to $100 million. However, he said Friday that he is content to conserve capital for the time being and concentrate on the Hancock integration.
Manulife closed its $13 billion deal for Hancock in April.
