The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday, June 12, edition that in the wake of Bank of Nova Scotia's $1.73-billion equity offering to partly finance the $2.6-billion acquisition of MD Financial Management, RBC analyst Darko Mihelic downgraded the bank to "sector perform" from "outperform." The Globe's David Leeder writes that Mr. Mihelic trimmed his share target to $86 from $95. Analysts on average target the shares at $86.74. Mr. Mihelic warns of a "relatively high" execution risk with several acquisitions coming down the pike through his forecast period. He says in a note: "We think BNS's stock will not perform as well as peers over this time frame. ... We think the Canadian economy is also poised to slow next year and thus the timing of these deals (which we believe BNS cannot control) is also not ideal. As Canada's economy slows, we believe efficiency will continue to be a focus for investors and we suspect that BNS will not interfere in the early days of acquisitions -- a good thing long-term, but shorter-term tough on operating leverage. We believe BNS is likely to produce negative operating leverage in 2019 compared to average positive operating leverage of 0.8 per cent for the other big banks we cover."