Sanwa Bank Wants to Land Big California Fish : Banking: The Japanese company is seeking a large purchase to triple its assets in the state.

Japan’s Sanwa Bank Ltd. wants to increase its presence in California by buying a big bank with hundreds of branches, a top executive said in an interview.

“That is our ultimate target,” Masahiro Yoda, a Sanwa managing director, said in an interview with Reuters.

Yoda said Sanwa, the world’s fourth-biggest banking company, would like to triple its assets in the state to about $20 billion and have 500 branches, compared to about 100 now.

He conceded that it would take time to achieve this goal, but Sanwa will not give up, he stressed.

Buying a big bank “is the only way” to achieve a major role in the California market, said Yoda, who is based in New York as general manager of Sanwa’s New York branch, a post he’s held since June, 1992. Prior to that, he was president and chief executive of Sanwa Bank California.

“You cannot build it one-by-one in such a huge market. But it is impossible to find such a size bank now,” he said.

He ruled out buying savings and loan institutions and said Sanwa would not overpay for whatever bank it might buy.

“Buying a number of smaller banks in California would take too much time and energy,” said Yoda, a 32-year veteran at Sanwa.

“It does not make much sense,” he said. “We might buy little things, but it won’t help much. To acquire a couple of $100-million (banks), we would not even discuss it. That is nothing for Sanwa.”

Sanwa has $476 billion in assets worldwide.

While California thrifts tend to be larger than banks and there are more for sale, Yoda said they do not fit in with Sanwa’s corporate culture, and “they are paying more interest” on deposits.

Yoda said one possibility would be to buy First Interstate Bancorp’s California bank, which has $19 billion in assets, except it would be prohibitively expensive.

A First Interstate spokesman said the bank is not for sale and is on the prowl for acquisitions itself.

Yoda also said BankAmerica Corp., California’s largest bank with $185 billion in assets, might shed assets at some point, which Sanwa could buy.

A BankAmerica spokesman declined comment. The bank has sold some assets in conjunction with its merger last year with Security Pacific but is generally considered as an acquirer.

Of the top 100 U.S. banking companies, only seven have any presence at all in California, which is dominated by BankAmerica, Wells Fargo & Co. and First Interstate.

“If you talk about the opportunities of the Japanese banks in California, it is very limited if you have to attain that size (about $20 billion in assets),” Yoda said.

He said when BankAmerica acquired Security Pacific, people said there would be no way the smaller Japanese banks could compete and no banks of “good size” left for them to buy.

“Lots of people said some Japanese banks might give up,” he said. “We are not giving up, but we will have to expand slowly. It might happen in a couple of years.”