Toronto-Dominion Bank (French: Banque Toronto-Dominion), doing business as TD Bank Group (Groupe Banque TD), and commonly known as just TD, is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The bank was created on February 1, 1955, through the merger of the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank, which were founded in 1855 and 1869, respectively. It is one of two Big Five banks of Canada founded in Toronto, the other being the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
In 2021, according to Standard & Poor's, TD Bank Group was the largest bank in Canada by total assets and also by market capitalization, a top 15 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. In 2023, the company was ranked 43rd in the Forbes Global 2000.
The bank and its subsidiaries have more than 102,000 employees and over 28 million customers worldwide. In Canada, the bank operates through its TD Canada Trust division and serves approximately 15 million customers through a network of 1,060 branches. In the United States, the company operates through their subsidiary TD Bank, N.A., which was created through the merger of TD Banknorth and Commerce Bank. TD Bank serves over 10 million customers in the United States, with a network of 1,100 branches in 15 states and Washington, D.C.
Contents
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 to merge the two financial institutions. The merger was later accepted by the Canadian minister of Finance on November 1, 1954, and was made official on February 1, 1955. The new institution adopted the name Toronto-Dominion Bank. The two banks were of similar size and had healthy balance sheets at the time of the merger. They were among Canada's smaller banks; their desire merge was to compete with the larger banks. The combined Toronto-Dominion Bank became the fourth largest bank in Canada, with assets of $1.1 billion.
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 (later known as Visa Inc.). 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 (ATM), 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 Guaranty 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.
TD Bank formed a partnership with Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) 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.
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.
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 December 1, 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 December 13, 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 (at the time, CIBC was Aa2, Scotiabank was Aa1 and Bank of Montreal was Aa2). It is also ranked number 1 by profit in the Top 1000 2012 listing.
From 2014 to 2015, TD went through a minor restructuring which included job cuts and other cost-cutting measures, under the leadership of Bharat Masrani, which kept the stock price on a stable upward trend.
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 Garden until 2007. After TD Banknorth was merged to form TD Bank, N.A., the venue dropped Banknorth from the name and was branded as TD Garden. The Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins, which play at the venue, announced a 20-year extension of the TD Garden naming rights deal in January 2023. The deal extends to 2045.
Other indoor stadiums sponsored by TD Bank include TD Station in Saint John, New Brunswick; TD Coliseum in Hamilton, TD Place Arena in Ottawa, Ontario, and TD Civic Centre in Brantford, 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
In 2010, a suspicious customer trading at TD Bank in the UK was fined £750,000 (US$1.16 million) by the Financial Services Authority for intentionally mismarking his trading positions.
News outlets reported the bank's policy regarding ordinary Iranian-Canadian citizens in July 2012. About 100 personal bank accounts had been closed, 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 US$1.4 billion fraud.
In 2015, the Canadian news website the Halifax Examiner reported that a political action committee (PAC) 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 (CBC) news programme Go Public reported that TD Bank employees had admitted that, under pressure to achieve sales 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 [sales revenue] 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 [CBC] 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 percent of its value on March 10, posting its worst day since 2009.
Leadership
President
Albert Clifford Ashforth, February 1, 1955 – December 6, 1960
Allen Thomas Lambert, December 6, 1960 – September 1972
Richard Murray Thomson, September 1972 – April 30, 1978
John Allan Boyle, May 1, 1978 – May 31, 1981
Robert Willem Korthals, June 1, 1981 – January 31, 1995
Alexander Charles Baillie, February 1, 1995 – July 5, 2000
William Edmund Clark, July 6, 2000 – October 31, 2014
Bharat Masrani, November 1, 2014 – January 31, 2025
Raymond Chun, February 1, 2025 – present
Chairman of the board
Byron Samuel Vanstone, February 1, 1955 – December 31, 1956
Allen Thomas Lambert, 1961 – April 30, 1978
Richard Murray Thomson, May 1, 1978 – January 31, 1998
Alexander Charles Baillie, February 1, 1998 – April 3, 2003
John Munro Thompson, April 3, 2003 – December 31, 2010
Brian Michael Levitt, January 1, 2011 – January 31, 2024
Alan Nelson MacGibbon, February 1, 2024 – September 1, 2025
John Brent MacIntyre, September 1, 2025 – present