Bank of Butterfield's new acquisition in the Bahamas will allow Bermuda's oldest bank to get a foothold on the Caribbean island that will allow it to expand and grow.

This is according to Graham Brooks, executive vice president of international and trust, who was instrumental in the buy-out of Thorand Bank and Trust Ltd., a small private bank in Nassau.

"It is quite a small bank mainly dealing in off balance sheet and wealth management," said Robert Lotmore, who is the current president of Thorand and will continue in the capacity of managing director.

Mr. Brooks revealed that the newly acquired bank has assets under management between $500 million and $1 billion and a staff of 22 which deals mainly with wealth management.

The bank will change its name to Bank of Butterfield (Bahamas) Ltd., but there are no plans to move into retail banking in the Bahamas at the moment.

Rather, the plan is to grow the business slowly from its existing client base, while using the power gained by having a larger organisation behind it to offer more services and products.

"This is an opportunity for us," said Mr. Brooks. "Looking forward we could grow the bank's size and hopefully we will have a meaningful presence in a short time."

But he was coy about Bank of Butterfield's other plans for expansion - with the Daily Nation in Barbados reporting that Bank of Butterfield is set to grab a foothold there as well - a fact the bank has neither accepted nor denied.

"This is a carefully selected strategic expansion," said Mr. Brooks. "That is all I can say at this moment."

But the bank's wholly-owned subsidiaries in Cayman, Guernsey and the UK have all done very well and account for 35 percent of the company's profits.

On Friday a report in the Bajan newspaper, the Daily Nation, said that Bank Butterfield is set to buy up Barbados' last indigenous bank.

The Daily Nation report stated: "It is almost a done deal! The sale of Barbados' last indigenous bank, The Mutual Bank, a subsidiary of Sagicor, to the Bank of Butterfield of Bermuda is almost completed."

But officials at Bermuda's oldest bank refused to comment on the buy-out, stating it did not comment on speculation.

Instead they chose to focus on the acquisition of the Bahamas bank, saying it would be good for business, good for its shareholders and good for the Bahamas.

"It will enhance our ability to attract new clients and add services to existing clients," said Mr. Lotmore.

"We don't have any land for retail banking in the immediate future," added Mr. Brooks. "We will continue with wealth management but we will be able to add to the banking capability."

Mr. Lotmore added that there will be no redundancies in the changeover, and in fact, if things go well, more staff would be hired.

"There will be changes required, but they will mainly be part of becoming part of a larger organisation with different reporting requirements," said Mr. Lotmore.

But, he added, that all the corporate governance requirements were already in place and had been implemented over the past few years.

When asked if this was a good time to expand the wealth and trust areas of the bank given that the United States appears to be hostile towards trusts, Mr. Brooks said: "There is quite a lot of misconception about trusts. The US is not against trusts, but is against tax evasion."

And he said that they only dealt with companies and people that were above board in this matter. He added that the bank's new clientele were from around the world - and not just from the US.

Thorand Bank was established in 1960, provides private banking, trust and other fiduciary services to private and institutional clients and, says on a website link, that it is "committed to ensuring that preferred clients' affairs are managed in a discreet manner and understands that each relationship is unique".