Tony Comper, chairman and CEO of Bank of Montreal, says that he wants to be one of a dozen or so trans-national banks in North America, serving clients on both sides of the border across the broad range of products.

In a news conference to announce the bank’s acquisition of CSFBdirect, Comper explained that while BMO is looking to grow its business in Canada, it is also targeting “substantial, but selective expansion” in the United States.

Comper said that with this deal, the bank is looking beyond the current weak market, toward the ongoing consolidation of the financial services business and the increasing integration of the Canadian and U.S economies.

BMO executives explained at length that today’s $830 million purchase of CSFBdirect is justified on a straight financial basis. The bank expects the deal to boost its U.S. wealth management revenues by 85%, making it the seventh largest discount broker in North America.

The bank also sees upside in integrating its direct offering with its basic retail banking and sophisticated private banking services in the U.S.

Comper described the bank’s U.S. strategy as three concentric circles: its Chicago-based Harris Bank serving the Chicagoland area at the core; an institutional focus on the Mid-West; and CSFBdirect forming the outer circle by adding a platform to reach into large U.S. urban areas.

Comper shrugged of questions about the small value of assets acquired in the deal, compared with CIBC’s recent Merrill Lynch acquisitions, preferring to focus on the 1 million clients it acquires in this deal. Only about half of these are active clients, meaning they’ve traded at least once in the last 12 months. But BMO sees the inactive investors as a major prospecting opportunity.

Gilles Ouellette, head of BMO wealthy management, highlighted three strengths to the deal: its platform to expand into key U.S. areas; the affluent client base; and, first rate technology. The bank hopes to expand the use of some of that technology to InvestorLine in Canada, and it notes that it has acquired the rights to CSFB research for three years.

On the cost side, the bank expects to take $100 million in costs out annually, noting that CSFB had already begun the cost-cutting, dropping its staff in the discount arm from 850 employees to 450. BMO expects to spend $30 million on rebranding CSFB as Harris Direct Investing.

On the subject of domestic bank mergers, Comper noted that it’s “not apparent” how this is going to play out, but that it is always on the lookout for like-minded partners. “We are not waiting for Godot,” however, he said.