Toronto-Dominion Bank


The Toronto-Dominion Bank is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Commonly known as TD and operating as TD Bank Group, the bank was created on 1 February 1955, through the merger of the Bank of Toronto and The Dominion Bank, which were founded in 1855 and 1869, respectively.
In 2017, according to Standard & Poor's, TD Bank Group was the largest bank in Canada by total assets, the second largest by market capitalization, a top-10 bank in North America, and the 26th largest bank in the world. In 2019, it was designated a global systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.
The bank and its subsidiaries have over 89,000 employees and over 26 million clients worldwide. In Canada, the bank operates as TD Canada Trust and serves more than 11 million customers at over 1,091 branches. In the United States, the company operates as TD Bank. The U.S. subsidiary was created through the merger of TD Banknorth and Commerce Bank, and it serves more than 6.5 million customers with a network of more than 1,241 branches in the eastern United States.

History

The predecessors of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, the Bank of Toronto, and The Dominion Bank were established in the mid 19th century, the former in 1855 and the latter in 1869. In 1954, an agreement was reached between the Bank of Toronto and The Dominion Bank to merge the two financial institutions. The merger was later accepted by the Canadian Minister of Finance on 1 November 1954, and was made official on 1 February 1955. The new institution adopted the name Toronto-Dominion Bank.
In 1967, TD Bank opened its new head office, the Toronto-Dominion Centre in downtown Toronto. In the next year, the bank entered into a partnership with Chargex. The TD Bank shield logo was unveiled to the public near the end of the decade, in 1969.
In 1976, TD Bank piloted its first automated teller machine, the TD 360, which was renamed The Green Machine, a name it continues to carry.
In 1987, Toronto Dominion Securities Inc. was established by the bank. TD Bank saw growth in the 1990s, with the acquisition of several financial assets including the commercial branches of Standard Chartered Bank of Canada. In 1992, the bank acquired the assets and branches of Central Guartanty Trust, as well as Waterhouse Investor Services in 1996.
In 1992, TD Bank and G4S Cash Solutions, a subsidiary of British security services company G4S plc, began a pilot project in Toronto that developed into a nationwide partnership in 1997. G4S Cash Solutions secured the contract to transport cash and provide first-line maintenance for the bank's ATMs – both cash dispensing and deposit pick up units." By 2010, the partnership had expanded where G4S Cash Solutions operated 2,577 ATMs, 1,093 branch night deposits, 95 weekly balanced cash dispensers as well as eight cash dispensers for branch tellers and 100 across the pavement services and hosted a discussion on the introduction of polymer banknotes in 2011 with leading Canadian financial institutions.
TD Bank formed a partnership with Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada in 1996 to create Symcor, a private entity that offers transaction services such as item processing, statement processing and cash-management services to major banks and retail and telecommunications companies in Canada. In 2011, Symcor produces close to 675 million statements and more than two billion pages of customer statements, and processes three billion cheques annually.
branch. Canada Trust was acquired in 2000, and presently serves TD's Canadian commercial banking operations.
In 1998, TD Bank and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce agreed to a merger. However, the Government of Canada, at the recommendation of then Minister of Finance Paul Martin, blocked the merger, as well as another proposed merger between the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank of Canada – believing it was not in the best interest of Canadians. In 2000, Toronto-Dominion Securities bought Newcrest Capital for $224 million. In the same year, TD Bank also acquired Canada Trust, re-branding most of its commercial banking operations in Canada as TD Canada Trust.

21st century

In 2002, TD Bank acquired Stafford Trading and Letco Trading. In the following year, TD Bank acquired Laurentian Bank's retail branches west of Quebec.
branch in New York City. TD Bank expanded into the United States in the early 21st century.
In 2004, TD Bank entered the American retail banking market, announcing an agreement to acquire the majority stake of Banknorth, a New England based bank, for a total of US$3.8 billion. Banknorth was later rebranded as TD Banknorth after the sale was finalized in March 2005.
In January 2006, the company sold its United States brokerage business branded as TD Waterhouse, which it had purchased in 1984, to Ameritrade. The business was renamed TD Ameritrade.
In April 2007, TD Bank acquired all remaining shares of TD Banknorth, transforming TD Banknorth into a fully owned subsidiary of TD Bank, and resulting in it being no longer traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In the same year, TD Bank acquired Commerce Bancorp, a bank based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Commerce Bancorp was later merged with TD Banknorth to form TD Bank, N.A. in 2008.
In 2010, the bank acquired the Florida-based Riverside National Bank of Fort Pierce; and the South Financial Group Inc. In the following year, TD Bank acquired Chrysler Financial, which was later rebranded as TD Auto Finance. On 1 December 2011, TD Bank acquired MBNA's Canadian credit card business. In October 2014, Affiliated Computer Services, a subsidiary of Xerox, acquired Symcor's U.S. operations from TD Bank.
After Moody's Investor Service downgraded the credit worthiness of Royal Bank of Canada to Aa1 on 13 December 2010, TD Bank remained the only one of Canada's Big Five banks with a top Aaa credit rating at that point in the Great Recession. It is also ranked number 1 in the Top 1000 2012 listing.
From 2014 to 2015, TD has gone through a minor restructuring which has included job cuts and other cost-cutting measures, under the leadership of Bharat Masrani, which has kept the stock price on a stable upward trend.
In April 2020 it became apparent that TD Bank is a significant secured creditor involved in the voluntary administration of the Virgin Australia airline, which has debts of AUD$7 billion. The Virgin administrators declared TD Bank held an all present and after-acquired property charge over substantially the whole of the property of certain entities of the airline.

Sponsorships

Toronto-Dominion Bank, and its subsidiaries, are title sponsors for a number of sporting venues in Canada, and the United States. TD Bank holds the naming rights to several multi-sport indoor arenas including TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. TD Banknorth acquired the naming rights for the Boston-based venue in 2005, with the venue being known as TD Banknorth Gardens until 2007. After TD Banknorth was merged to form TD Bank, N.A., the venue's dropped Banknorth from the name and was branded as TD Gardens.
Other indoor stadiums sponsored by TD Bank include TD Station in Saint John, New Brunswick; and TD Place Arena in Ottawa, Ontario. TD Place Arena forms a part of TD Place at Lansdowne Park. The bank also holds the naming rights to the outdoor stadium at TD Place, known as TD Place Stadium. Other outdoor stadiums sponsored by TD Bank include TD Stadium in London, Ontario and TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida.

Controversies

News outlets reported the bank's policy regarding ordinary Iranian-Canadian citizens, July 10, 2012. Some one hundred personal bank accounts had been closed to this date, citing the recent ambiguous Special Economic Measure Regulation of the Canadian government. A family in Vancouver was forced to refinance a $250,000 house mortgage in 60 days to avoid foreclosure.
A TD Bank document became the focus of a 2012 contempt hearing in Miami federal court. In a civil lawsuit against TD Bank, a jury found the bank liable for aiding alleged Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein's $1.4 billion fraud.
In 2015, the Canadian news website the Halifax Examiner reported that a Political action committee established by TD Bank had donated over $50,000 to the campaigns of anti-LGBT rights politicians in the United States. The article suggested that this was problematic given TD Bank's status as a sponsor of 41 LGBT Pride events across North America; TD Bank made no comment. In response to this article, on October 6, 2015, a motion was brought at the Annual General Meeting of Halifax Pride to sever ties with TD Bank if it did not provide a satisfactory response to the concerns; the motion was ultimately defeated.
On March 10, 2017, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news programme Go Public reported that TD Bank employees had admitted that, under pressure to achieve sale's targets, they had increased customers' lines of credit, overdraft amounts, and Visa credit limits without advising them which is against the law. One TD financial adviser says she "invested clients' savings into funds which were not suitable, because of the SR pressure". Another admitted downplaying the risk of products saying: "I was forced to lie to customers, just to meet the sales revenue targets." In an internal letter to employees, Andy Pilkington, executive vice-president of branch banking, wrote: "We don't believe the story is an accurate portrayal of our culture," but the report provided an opportunity "to pause, reflect and ask ourselves... how we can do better for our people and our customers." The bank's stock lost 5.55% of its value on March 10, declining by $3.88 per share to close at $66.00.