TD’s US Investment-Banking Push Risks Leaving Canada Behind

TD’s US Investment-Banking Push Risks Leaving Canada Behind

As hundreds of TD Securities managing directors gathered at the Encore hotel overlooking Boston Harbor in June, there was a celebratory atmosphere in the air. Less publicly, there was grousing as well.

The buoyant mood at the multiday meeting was partly because Toronto-Dominion Bank's takeover of New York investment bank Cowen Inc. — completed in 2023 — had cleared its last legal hurdle just months earlier, allowing the firms' traders to finally work together in person.

The event also marked the first time that TD Securities head Tim Wiggan outlined his vision and assembled his newly minted leadership team — notably Dan Charney, head of global markets, and Larry Wieseneck, who runs corporate and investment banking.

Both men are former Cowen executives with ambitions of building TD into a powerhouse that competes with Wall Street giants. But their ascension was taken as a sign by some Canadian employees that Toronto-Dominion's new US focus was leaving them behind.

With the Cowen integration complete, TD Securities is now able to go after clients more aggressively to win capital-markets business in markets such as US convertibles and Canadian cash equities.

It has also left a trail of internal discord, with a contingent of staffers believing its Canadian franchise has become an afterthought — affecting their own status and pay. A dozen current and former employees spoke to Bloomberg News about what has happened since the merger. They asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

Wiggan, who's been with TD for more than two decades, said the firm's teams are structured to be global and doesn't agree with the claim that former Cowen staff have taken over.

“I think it's balanced,” he said in an interview. Shareholders expect the company to hang on to top performers, whether or not they're in TD's home office, he said. “It's in everyone's interest to make sure that the best and brightest get those opportunities.”

After a money-laundering scandal left Toronto-Dominion subject to growth restrictions in its American retail business, success in the capital-markets unit has never been more important. Revenue has surged, hitting more than C$2 billion in each of the past three quarters and surpassing executives' initial targets. At Toronto-Dominion's investor day Monday, Chief Executive Officer Raymond Chun said he sees “tremendous upside” in TD Securities, with plans to improve its adjusted return on equity to about 13% by fiscal 2029, up from about 9% last year.

Low Morale

TD traders occupy a floor in One Vanderbilt, the 73-floor skyscraper that shoots into the sky above Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. It's populated with TD staff who've been around since before the deal, Cowen equities traders and recent recruits from the likes of Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Some new employees didn't have the Canadian company on their radar before the merger, but were persuaded to join the firm in part because of Charney and Wieseneck, who say they've got the best growth story going on Wall Street.

“We have the generational opportunity to build maybe the last great investment bank on the planet,” Charney said in an interview. It's become a common talking point at the firm, with the thinking being that while top global investment banks are near their natural market share, TD has a lot more room to run.

The firm is attracting a “flock of talent,” said Christina Petrou, TD Securities' New York-based chief operating officer. “Everybody wants to be part of that story.”

In Toronto, about 250 traders work out of the seventh floor of a historic building in a complex of towers that bear the bank's name. A pre-Covid renovation modernized the space — old carpets were pulled up and a fair number of mice evicted — but the double-story ceilings and large stone pillars still evoke a sense of history. Many working there today have built their careers at the bank over decades.

For some in the building, along with the corporate and investment bankers who work out of a matching tower across the street, the attention and resources spent on TD's US growth strategy mean the Canadian business has been largely left to defend its position in a mature market.

Some see evidence of this in pay disparities. Compensation in New York is typically higher than in Toronto, but some of TD's Canadian managers are paid less than their subordinates in the US, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. For similar roles, the pay is sometimes the same dollar figure in both countries, which doesn't account for the weaker Canadian currency, the people said.

When it first struck the deal to acquire Cowen, TD agreed to pay ex-Cowen executives $146.5 million in retention and integration bonuses, including $73 million to Wieseneck and Charney alone.

And while the firm has invested even more by poaching New York bankers and traders, some departments have limited hiring and pay raises in Canada, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. A steady trickle of job cuts has harmed morale in Canada, even if the trims were needed to combat rising costs. TD's revenue per employee underperforms its biggest Canadian rivals.

So far, investors have been “underwhelmed with the overall profitability” of the combined TD-Cowen, said Jefferies Financial Group Inc. analyst John Aiken. The TD Securities division has yet to deliver on return on equity “whether that's because expenses are too high or they're not generating enough dollars per employee.”

Aiken said he's been encouraged to see most former Cowen employees remain with the firm. Pay gaps between Canada and the US have always existed, he said, but they've become more evident in a merger like this one. “Welcome to reality.”

TD is “absolutely committed” to having leadership roles and career-building opportunities in Canada, Wiggan said, noting that he's based in Toronto. The rationale for the Cowen deal wasn't just to expand but to better serve TD's Canadian clients who do business in the US, he said.

More Nimble

While TD has long relied on its lending relationships in Canada to drum up related capital-markets business, some employees say the firm's leaders believed they could continue counting on that loyalty and didn't need to devote as many resources to its domestic franchise.

But that hasn't always worked out in practice. At TD's Canadian fixed-income business, for example, several top staffers departed over a span of several months and multiple bond investors said the firm appeared to lose focus. TD dropped close to the bottom of the league table among its peers for most of the first half of the year — a ranking that can be affected by many factors, including deal flow — though it has since recovered to its usual No. 2 position.

In the US, meanwhile, the focus is on offense. TD is building a prime-brokerage business and launched a convertible-equity business last year — something executives say the firm would have struggled to do without the combination of TD and Cowen. Through the end of August this year, it was first on the US equity-linked league table, helped by its role as sole lead on GameStop Corp.'s $2.7 billion convertible issue, Wiggan said.

TD has also made advances in automated trading, which helped it become the top municipal-bond dealer in the US. The firm has made several moves to put automation at the center of its fixed-income desks in the US, but in Canada that process is much further behind, Matt Schrager, the bank's co-head of automated trading, told Bloomberg in an interview in May.

Across its business, TD is taking steps to be more nimble. The firm has a reputation for being conservative. While its overall risk appetite hasn't changed, it's brought on more subject-matter experts in legal and compliance roles, which results in faster answers on whether to move forward with transactions, loans or new lines of business. “It was very comforting to see the bank make those investments,” Wieseneck said.

Toronto-Dominion plans to find C$500 million to C$600 million in annual cost savings at the division, it said Monday, with savings coming from automation and artificial intelligence, optimizing vendor and real estate costs, and “enhancing colleague productivity.”

On balance, Wiggan said, employee satisfaction in the division has improved and is as strong as it's been in half a decade, with internal surveys indicating that staffers feel good about the “clarity of strategic direction.” Chun, the bank's CEO, has called out the capital-markets business as a priority, which has also given workers a boost, Wiggan said.

As it integrated Cowen, TD made it a priority to tear down regional silos, Wiggan said, adding that winning in the US but losing in Canada would be a failure.

“We're not going to forget where we're from,” he said.

With assistance from Paula Sambo.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.

Source: LiveMint
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