Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) chief executive Ralph Norris may power the group's advisory distribution in Western Australia, should negotiations to buy BankWest end successfully.
CBA announced yesterday it was in exclusive talks to buy BankWest from its parent, Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).
CBA has 77 branches in WA, compared to 364 in New South Wales alone, a CBA spokesperson said. BankWest has around 87 branches in WA, according to an HBOS Australia spokesperson.
Norris said in August that he is confident the lender's wealth management arm would grow faster than its banking division, and become one of the bank's biggest profit generators.
Dealer Group Advisers director Andrew Wheeler said: "Based on the fact that they [CBA] do not have much of a presence [in WA]... it makes a lot of sense and would obviously only help their financial planning area, and... takes the uncertainty away from BankWest, given Lloyds taking over HBOS."
The deal would also include HBOS' specialist insurance and financial planning arm St Andrews Australia, and advisory business Whittaker Macnaught, the HBOS Australia spokesperson confirmed.
St Andrews Australia had 18 advisers and $369 million in funds under advice (FUA), while Whittaker Macnaught had 24 planners with $1.6 billion in FUA at the end of June, data from the latest IFA Dealer Group Survey showed.
WA is the country's fastest growing state, where average salaries in the mining sector start at $100,000, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed in August.
