CANADA FINANCE-For Manulife, the acquisitive spirit is willing

* Manulife builds acquisition team, but no deal timetable

* Maintains focus of fortifying capital

* Could consider European opportunities

By Pav Jordan

TORONTO, June 25 (Reuters) - In Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City there is a tower emblazoned with the green logo of Manulife Financial, Canada's top life insurer.

The same sign lights the sky in Hong Kong, Tokyo and other cities across the 19 countries where Manulife operates.

If Chief Executive Donald Guloien gets his way, the company will plant its flag in other global cities, maybe even in one of the European capitals it has ogled from a distance.

"There are tons of opportunities right now, and our M&A team has doubled in size in the last couple of months," Guloien said in an interview from headquarters in Toronto, Canada's financial capital.

The global financial crisis has put into play the distressed assets of many of Manulife's former rivals, and with one-time titans such as American International Group Inc (AIG.N) buried under massive debt loads, Manulife may be in line to pick up some of the pieces.

"Some companies are going to have to shed off some businesses in order to strengthen their balance sheets ... so there's an opportunity for a shakeout here," said Tom Mackinnon, an analyst at Scotia Capital in Toronto who sees potential for Manulife to expand in North America and Asia.

IS IT READY?

But it may not be so easy for Manulife (MFC.TO), which is is emerging from the crisis with some nasty bruises of its own. While it fared better than many international competitors, it may need time to recover from exposure to billions of dollars in liabilities incurred by its variable annuity business.

Under the direction of its former CEO, Dominic D'Alessandro, the business offered guaranteed pension-plan payouts to clients and funded the promise by investing clients' money in stocks, some of which tanked last year. The company had no hedges in place to mitigate the damage.

Shares of Manulife tumbled as it recorded a C$1.07 billion loss in the first quarter and investors questioned its ability to cope. Some analysts say Manulife was in a deeper crisis than it admitted publicly.

"This risk position is not going away fast. I think you'll find (CEO) Don (Guloien) spends a lot of this year shoring up the balance sheet, raising capital, trying to get that horse back in the corral," one analyst said on condition of anonymity.

In response, the company revamped its policies, hired a dedicated team to manage its hedge program and raised fresh capital.