Among the traditional holiday gifts we receive in the business news inbox are predictions for the coming year.

Michael Mrnak's vision is looking up. Mrnak is vice president and senior client manager with the Business Banking group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for the upper Midwest, based in Minneapolis.

Within the concentrations of manufacturing, health care and distribution, Mrnak sees a continuation of the growth and recovery cycle we've seen over the past few years.

Of course, there are usual challenges that business will continue to face, including finding skilled staffing and the continuous upgrading of technology. But financing for this will come amid a favorable interest rate environment, albeit that's predicted to change gradually in 2015.

"We're very optimistic and bullish on 2015 when it comes to manufacturing, business distribution and health care, sectors that we tend to focus in on," Mrnak said. "We've had stabilized and increased cash flow over the last 36 months, and we see a lot of expansion in these areas."

In a recent interview, Mrnak provided more details. His answers have been edited for context and clarity.

When you say you're seeing business growth in these sectors, can you be more specific?

In the manufacturing sector, we're seeing a lot of increases both in the real estate capacity with refurbishing their existing facilities, and expanding with ground-up construction; with expansion comes a lot of capital expenditure spending, equipment financing, and certainly with that, automation.

"And we see a cycle every three to five years with cap-ex spending, with equipment financing; to stay ahead of the game in automation, you need to upgrade that equipment."

What about in health care?

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Business banker sees growth in manufacturing and health care through investment, acquisitions