Chaimae Chouiekh
(Bloomberg) – Imperial Commercial Bank of Canada has surpassed the market capitalization of Nova Scotia and became Canada’s fourth-tier valuable bank, as investors’ sentiment shifts are conducive to lenders’ exposure to the domestic market more.
CIBC has been Canada’s best major bank over the past year, with its share price soaring 47% to close at CAD 94.6 billion ($68.9 billion) as of Friday. It has not surpassed Scotiabank since the early 2000s and until this month.
Scotiarank has been the group’s worst performance, with its shares rising 17% over the past 12 months. This is largely due to insufficient revenue as the bank implements a long-term strategy to try to narrow down capital allocated to Latin America by IT.
“I think there’s a decent cultural shift happening right now,” said Dan Rohinton, portfolio manager at IA Global Asset Management. “It’s long enough, consistent enough that you can give them the sustainability and durability of the work they propose.”
As borrowing costs stabilize, the Canadian housing market showed signs of resilience, and investors have turned to lenders, exposed to domestic retail banking. With global market fluctuations, CIBC has become a relative safe haven. The bank received 63% of revenue from Canadian personal, commercial and commercial banks and wealth management in the first six months of the fiscal year.
Investors and analysts also pointed out that the improvement in CIBC technology, cost and productivity are factors that make banks perform better than their peers.
Scotiabank also strives to win a larger share of the Canadian market under CEO Scott Thomson, who took over the top position in 2023. However, it is still in the middle of a strategic overhaul that has shifted the company’s investment to Latin America, with political insignificance and inflation slashing profitability – lowering Canada and Mexico to Canada and Mexico.
“The differentiator in Scotia is indeed an international and Latin America focus, and the region has been underperformed over the past few years, clearly negatively affecting investors’ perceptions of its outlook,” Jeffries analyst John Aiken said in an interview.
Following the recent earnings report, RBC capital markets analyst Darko Mihelic wrote that Scotiabank’s international banking business is still in a “transitional mode” and the stock is under low valuation, partly due to struggles to grow Canadian franchise.
Scotiabank’s representative declined to comment.
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Last modified: August 5, 2025
