NAB wants to expand wealth business

National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB), which on Friday delivered an interim profit in excess of $2 billion, said it would like to expand its wealth business.

But, it said, it does not need merger and acquisition activity to deliver value for shareholders over the next three years.

"What I said is we didn't need merger and acquisition activity," NAB chief executive John Stewart told ABC Television.

"In other words, we can deliver value for our shareholders for the next three years, which is our planning period, just by organic growth."

Mr Stewart declined to comment on speculation it was in due diligence to buy the retail broking operations of the Australia arm of Citigroup.

"What we will look at though is ... are there things we could acquire that will help our growth beyond three years and in the wealth management space we would be interested in good quality assets there, but, you know, I am not going to comment on Citibank or any other particular name."

Asked if NAB was interested in expanding into investment banking, Mr Stewart said "if the right opportunities came along".

"Of course, it would interest us but at the end of the day businesses have to make sense and we have to see a way that we can run them profitably."

Australia's second biggest bank, which is more focused on business banking than its peers, grew its bottom line profit by 25.8 per cent to $2.687 billion in the six months to March 31, from the same period last year.

Cash earnings, which excluded a one-off boost from the float of credit card giant Visa, increased by 6.9 per cent to $2.239 billion - a little above market forecasts of $2.213 billion.

The bank's preferred measure of profitability, cash earnings on an ongoing operations basis, rose by eight per cent to $2.237 billion.