DBS Bank announced yesterday, in unison with ANZ Banking Group, that it had agreed to acquire the wealth management and retail banking business of ANZ in five markets for approximately S$110 million above book value.  The portfolio of businesses being acquired are ANZ's retail and wealth management operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Indonesia, representing total deposits of S$17 billion, loans of S$11 billion, investment assets under management of S$6.5 billion and total revenue of S$825 million for FY2016.  They serve about 1.3 million customers, of which over 100,000 are affluent or private wealth customers and 1.2 million are retail customers. "With the acquisition, DBS will add S$23 billion in wealth assets under management to its books, with high net worth clients accounting for S$6 billion. This will take DBS' high net worth AUM and total wealth AUM to S$115 billion and S$182 billion, respectively," the bank said. (Note: currency cross-rates are close to parity, with the AUD trading slightly higher than the SGD) Many of ANZ's wealth management clients are credit card customers. The DBS acquisition will also add a valuable and sizeable customer base to DBS in Indonesia and in Taiwan -  for instance, DBS will add around 530,000 customers, expanding its base by 2.5 times.  With a larger scale in both markets, DBS is confident it will be able to fast-track the build-out of its digital strategy.  DBS expects the transaction to create "significant value" by giving it instant scale in the five markets. In a media release in parallel with ANZ's announcements, DBS said it would "bolt on" the ANZ business to its existing platform, and benefit from efficiencies especially in technology and branch distribution.  "The transaction is expected to be ROE and earnings accretive one year after completion," DBS said, adding that it expected to achieve ROE in the order of 15 per cent. "Over the past five years, DBS has consistently grown its wealth management business and is today among the top five private banks in Asia," the bank said in its parallel statement with ANZ.  This deal, when it's completed, is likely to make DBS the first Singaporean, and indeed the first Asian based bank, to break into that private club.  ANZ's CEO Shayne Elliott said that this is why the deal was so good.  "Both parties get what they want. Foreign banks need scale to compete with very large local players. The world has changed in the cost of operating - the cost of technology, the cost of compliance, the cost of regulatory adherence - all those costs have gone up. DBS is already operating in those markets and happen to have very good technology and a good brand.  "DBS also has a lower cost of capital than ANZ so their hurdles are lower than ours. That also makes a difference [in making the deal attractive for DBS]. They can basically take our customers and put them on the platform and get the scale benefits," Elliott said. "Good luck to them I think they