There is a foreign buyer out there in the market for possible U.S. asset management acquisitions. Bloomberg reports that Scotiabank is open to making acquisitions of North American money managers.

Barbara Mason, executive vice president of wealth management at Scotiabank, told told the news service that the Toronto-headquartered bank may look look at the U.S. for expansion possibilities.

Scotiabank has made a priority of increasing its asset management fees. The bank currently has the smallest mutual fund business among the five largest banks in the country.

With the looney at an all-time high against the dollar, Canadian companies have been taking a much closer look at buying into the U.S. fund space. The three biggest insurers in the country already have U.S. mutual fund operations: Manulife has John Hancock, Sunlife has MFS and Great-West has Putnam.

There is no shortage of U.S. fund companies rumored to be for sale that Scotiabank would be interested in. Banks hit hard by the credit crunch such as National City, Fifth Third, Wachovia and Key Corp have all been rumored to be mulling the sale of their asset management units.  

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