Royal Bank of Canada Doing Just Fine in U.S.

For an unsophisticated reader, reports that Royal Bank of Canada (RY) is in discussions to part ways with its U.S. personal and commercial bank may have made it seem like RBC as a whole is suffering south of the border.

But that message is far from the truth, and Hamilton Capital, run by former bank analyst Rob Wessel and Jennifer Mersereau, is trying change public opinion.

Chiefly, Mr. Wessel argues that it’s "very unfortunate" that there’s so much negative attention on the U.S. personal commercial division because the bank has had a lot of success in investment banking and wealth management south of the border. Most notably, a major increase in investment banking profitability has more than offset losses from commercial banking.

Moreover, Mr. Wessel argues that the current management team has done the best it could with a weak asset that it inherited. (The current CEO and management team