The takeover last year of the main operating businesses of Investec Bank (Australia), since renamed BOQ Specialist, was the third major lending business that BOQ has acquired in a decade, after it picked up UFJ equipment finance (formerly Sanwa) in 2003 and CIT, a funder of vendor finance to many iconic brands, in 2010.Banking Day observed at the time this acquisition was being closed, back in April 2014, that these previous two takeovers had not really delivered the diversification in business mix or the cross-sell benefits promised.We wondered how the new business, with a client base of white collar professionals - doctors, dentists and accountants - would fare under its new owners."Equivalent pledges are an inevitable part of the present BOQ management's pitch on the merit of the Investec acquisition, and yet another way in which the incumbents can distinguish themselves from their predecessors," was how we called it back then.Including the contributions from BOQ Specialist, the group's cash earnings improved by 14% after tax - so, based purely on two half-year results, it looks like the current team have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors.In particular, the $1.4 billion result for the mortgage cross-sell via BOQ Specialist, at a time of furious competition in a crowded market, is an achievement - and done using a system that operates on faxes and paper clips, according to CEO Jon Sutton.This may be the last look at BOQ Specialist in isolation, though. The bank's CFO Anthony Rose announced that the integration has run so smoothly that from FY 16 onwards, the activities of the BOQ Specialist unit will be integrated with the rest of the bank's results, making further assessment of the bank's latest acquisition far more difficult.