The story
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.
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 CA$224 million (75 per cent in stock and 25 per cent in cash). In the same year, TD Bank also acquired Canada Trust, re-branding most of its commercial banking operations in Canada as TD Canada Trust.
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Ultimately Martin would approve the merger of TD and Canada Trust with some conditions. The new bank sold Canada Trust's MasterCard business to meet the demands of the Competition Bureau due to the fact that TD issued Visa cards at the time and Canada Trust issued MasterCard and competition rules at the time prevented a single institution from the duality of selling both brands simultaneously. The Competition Bureau also forced the sale of 13 branches, representing over 120,000 customers, in three Ontario markets where the territories of TD and Canada Trust overlapped. The vast majority of the affected branches were in the Kitchener–Waterloo area, including four in Kitchener, two in Waterloo, four in Cambridge and one in Elmira. All but one branch were sold to the Bank of Montreal for $50 million. The remaining branch in Paris, Ontario, was sold to Laurentian Bank of Canada. In all six TD branches and seven Canada Trust branches specifically changed hands to meet the Competition Bureau's requirements.
In response, TD announced it would close 275 branches, representing 4,900 employees, to adhere to the ruling and to reduce overall costs. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the Competition Bureau's decision to ultimately approve the deal would reduce consumer choice while eliminating the chance to create a second-tier of Canadian banking by killing off the Trust industry in Canada.
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.
In April 2020 it became apparent that TD Bank was a significant secured creditor involved in the voluntary administration of the Virgin Australia airline, which has debts of A$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.
In March 2021, TD Bank agreed to buy Headlands Tech Global Markets LLC from Headlands Technologies to enhance its automated fixed income trading platform.
Bloomberg reported that TD Bank, along with Canada's other large banks, added ESG measures to their chief executive officers' compensation plans.
On February 28, 2022, TD made a US$13.4 billion offer for First Horizon Corp., with 1,159 branches, expected to be completed in February 2023. This would be the second-largest bank deal since the Great Recession in the United States. As of December 31, 2021, TD had US$423.65 billion in U.S. assets, making it the ninth largest bank in the United States. If completed the deal would give TD 1,560 branches in 22 U.S. states. On May 4, 2023, it was announced that the deal would not proceed due to regulatory uncertainty.
In July 2022, TD Bank announced it was evaluating a takeover of US brokerage firm Cowen. The following month, TD agreed to buy Cowen for US$1.3 billion in an all-cash deal, paying Cowen shareholders US$39 per share. TD announced that Cowen chair and CEO Jeffrey Solomon would join the senior leadership of TD's securities division following the acquisition, and that the combined business will be known as TD Cowen, headed by Solomon. To fund the purchase, TD sold over 28 million non-voting common shares of Charles Schwab Corporation, reducing its stake in the company from 13.4 percent to 12 percent.
In August 2023, TD Bank Group announced that it was expanding its share repurchase program. It planned to repurchase 90 million shares (about 4.9 percent of outstanding shares).
Baharat Masarani announced his retirement in September 2024, having been CEO since 2014. In February 2025, Raymond Chun took over as CEO of TD Bank Group. In the same month, Toronto-Dominion Bank indicated it aimed to sell its 10.1% stake in Charles Schwab for about 14.6 billion USD. This followed the company's $3.09-billion money-laundering fine from U.S. federal regulators and the Department of Justice. The bank planned to use 8 billion CAD of the proceeds for share buybacks and sought to invest the rest in growth as it simplified its U.S. operations.
In May 2025, TD Bank announced the closure of 38 branches across 10 states and Washington, D.C., effective June 5, 2025. This decision was part of a broader industry trend, with 272 bank branches closed nationally in the first quarter of 2025 alone.
From Wikipedia’s article on Toronto-Dominion Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8