Christine Dobby and Chunzi Xu
(Bloomberg) – There is a celebration atmosphere in the air as hundreds of TD Securities board directors gather at the Encore Hotel overlooking Boston Harbor in June. Not very public, but there are also awesome.
The buoyancy sentiment at the multi-day meeting was partly because Toronto-Dominion Bank’s acquisition of New York investment bank Cowen Inc. (completed in 2023) has cleared the last legal hurdle a few months ago, allowing the company’s traders to finally work together in person.
The event also marks the first time that TD Securities chief Tim Wiggan has outlined his vision and assembled his newly cast leadership team – especially Dan Charney, global market leader and Larry Wieseneck, who runs corporate and investment banking.
Both are former Cowan executives who built TD as a strong ambitious competition with the Wall Street giants. However, some Canadian employees see their promotion as a sign of Toronto-Dimignon’s new American focus.
With the completion of Cowen integration, TD Securities can now follow its customers more actively to win capital market operations in markets such as U.S. convertibles and Canadian cash stocks.
It also leaves traces of internal and discord, with a group of employees believing that its Canadian franchise has become an afterthought-influenced their own status and salary. Twelve current and former employees have released a statement with Bloomberg News about what has happened since the merger. They ask not to be sure of the discussion of sensitive matters.
Wiggan, who has worked at TD for more than two decades, said the company’s team structure is global and disagrees with the claim that former Cowen employees took over.
“I think it’s balanced,” he said in an interview. He said shareholders want the company to stick with the best performance, whether they’re in TD’s home office or not. “Make sure the best and smartest opportunities to get these opportunities are in line with everyone’s interests.”
The success of capital marketing units has never been more important after the money laundering scandal put Toronto-rulers under the constraints of growth in the U.S. retail business. Revenue surged, reaching more than $2 billion in each of the past four quarters and surpassing executives’ initial targets. The business is expected to be the focus of the bank’s investor day on Monday.
Low morale
TD Traders occupy a Vanderbilt floor, a 73-story skyscraper that shoots into the sky above Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal. TD employees who have been around since the deal, Cowen Equities traders and the latest recruits from recruits such as Bank of America and Goldman Sachs Group.
Some new employees did not have the radar of the Canadian company before the merger, but were convinced to join the company, partly because of Charney and Wieseneck, who said they had the best upbringing stories on Wall Street.
“We have the opportunity to build the last great investment bank on the planet,” Channey said in an interview. This has become a common conversation point for the company, believing that TD has more room to run despite the global top investment banks being close to their natural market share.
Christina Petrou, New York chief operating officer at TD Securities, said the company is attracting a “talent base.” “Everyone wants to be part of this story.”
In Toronto, about 250 traders exercise on the seventh floor of a historic building with a bunch of towers marked with the bank’s name. The prepaved renovation works modernize the space – the old carpet is pulled up and expelled a considerable number of rats – but the double ceilings and large stone pillars still evoke a sense of history. Many of the jobs that work there today have built their own careers in banks for decades.
For some in the building, the attention and resources spent on TD’s U.S. growth strategy along with the towers that match the streets, the focus and resources spent on TD’s U.S. growth strategy meant that the Canadian business was largely intended to defend its position in mature markets.
Some people see this in the salary difference. New York is generally paid more than Toronto, but some Canadian managers at TD are paid less than those in the U.S. People say that for similar roles, salary in both countries is sometimes the same dollar figure, which does not mean that the Canadian currency is weak.
When the first agreement was reached to acquire Cowen, TD agreed to pay former executives $146.5 million in retention and integration bonuses, including $73 million to Wieseneck and Charney.
According to three people familiar with the matter, while the company made more investments by poaching New York bankers and businessmen, some departments have limited recruitment and pay raises in Canada. Even if trimming is needed to hit rising costs, Canadian morale has steadily damaged. TD’s employee earns not enough to reach its largest Canadian competitor.
So far, investors have been “disturbed by TD-Cowen’s overall profitability,” said John Aiken, an analyst at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. TD Securities Division has not delivered on the return on equity “is it because the fees are too high or the income per employee is insufficient.”
Aiken said he was encouraged to see most of the former Cowen employees stay at the company. He said the salary gap between Canada and the United States has always existed, but in such a merger, they become more obvious. “Welcome to reality.”
Wiggan said TD was “absolutely committed to opportunities to have leadership positions and careers in Canada, noting that he is based in Toronto. He said the reason for the Cowen deal was not only to expand, but to better serve Canadian clients where TD operates in the U.S..”
More flexible
While TD has long relied on its loan relationship in Canada to attract related capital marketing operations, some employees said the company’s leaders think they can continue to count on this loyalty and don’t need to provide as many resources for its domestic franchises.
But this is not always solved in practice. For example, in TD’s Canadian fixed income business, several senior employees left in a matter of months, with multiple bond investors saying the company appears to have lost focus. TD has dropped at the bottom of the peer league table for much of the first half of the year, and this ranking may be affected by many factors, including transaction traffic – although it has since returned to its usual No. 2 position.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the focus is on offense. TD is building a major brokerage business and launched a convertible equity business last year – executives say the company will work hard to do without a combination of TD and Cowen. By the end of August this year, it was the only lead of GameStop Corp. for the first time on the U.S. Stock and Stock League table.
TD has also made progress in automated trading, which has helped it become the top municipal bond dealer in the U.S., which has taken several steps to put automation at the center of the U.S. fixed income table, but in Canada, the process is backward again.
In its business, TD is taking steps to be more agile. The company is known for its conservativeness. While its overall risk appetite has not changed, it brings more subject matter experts in the legal and compliance role, which leads to faster answers whether to move towards a deal, a loan or a new business. “It’s very gratifying to see banks make these investments,” Wisenek said.
Overall, employee satisfaction in the department has been improved and is as strong as it has been for fifty years, Wiggan said, and internal surveys show employees are satisfied with the “clearity of strategic direction.” Wiggen said Toronto-Demini CEO Raymond Chun has made capital marketing a priority, which has also boosted workers.
Wiggan said that as it integrates Cowen, TD will demolish regional islands as a priority, adding that winning in the United States but losing in Canada will be a failure.
“We won’t forget where we come from,” he said.
– With the assistance of Paula Sambo.
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Big Bank Dan Charney Investment Banking Larry Wieseneck Raymond Chun TD Bank Tim Wiggan Toronto-Dominion Bank
Last modified: September 29, 2025
