Royal Bank of Canada now wants to be known as RBC Financial Group, and that goes for the half dozen businesses it has bought on this side of the border in recent years.
The new brand name and the Toronto company's lion and globe logo, already familiar in Canada, are to be spread over the company's consumer and commercial banking, investment banking, wealth management, global transaction, and insurance businesses.
The idea is to create a common identifier for Royal Bank's operations in 30 countries. Its official name will remain Royal Bank of Canada.
"Every time we run an ad, it is building the brand," said David Moorcroft, a senior vice president who has worked on the company's branding council.
Royal Bank began buying U.S. businesses in 2000. It owns the Chicago mortgage company Prism Financial Corp. (now RBC Prism); Prism Builder Finance Group, a home builder financing company in Houston (now RBC Builder Finance); Liberty Life Insurance Co. and Liberty Insurance Corp. in Greenville, S.C., (now combined into RBC Liberty Insurance); Centura Banks Inc. of Rocky Mount, N.C., (now RBC Centura); and Dain Rauscher Wessels in Minneapolis (now RBC Dain Rauscher Wessels), a broker-dealer.
As of Nov. 1, when regulatory approval is expected, Dain Rauscher's investment banking operations are supposed to be integrated with RBC Dominion Securities under the name RBC Capital Markets. Dain Rauscher's brokerage arm and fixed-income capital markets are to be split off and take the name RBC Dain Rauscher.
In May, Royal Bank vice chairman Jim Rager told a group of Charlotte, N.C., business leaders that the company expects further U.S. expansion through internal growth and acquisitions.
Royal Bank on Tuesday reported a 3% increase in profits for its third quarter, which ended July 31, compared with a year before. Net income was $376.8 million, or 53 cents a share, up from $364.5 million, or 56 cents a share. The profits excluded restructuring charges for U.S. retail operations after the Centura deal.
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