Banking on America

Since 1855, when TD Bank’s predecessor, The Bank of Toronto, was founded by a group of flour millers and grain dealers, to the international conglomerate it is today, TD Bank has been one of the most proactive financial institutions on the planet. And in the bank’s expansion into the United States, it has been arguably the most successful of the ventures, with the familiar stylized TD logo and the green background lighting up buildings in Manhattan and other major American cities. Today, TD Ameritrade does more daily trades than any discount brokerage in the world, and the bank itself has more than a thousand branches in the United States, even as institution after institution has closed up shop in the face of the financial crisis.

Howard Green, Canada’s best-known interviewer of business notables, brings a Canadian bank to life through the people who have built it into the money-spinning machine that spews out more than $11-million a day in profit. From the days of former CEO Keith Gray filling inkwells and packing a revolver in rural Ontario branches in the 1950s to today’s CEO, Ed Clark, overseeing more than half a trillion dollars in assets, 74,000 employees and 10 million Internet customers, this book is about an iconic Canadian company that has outshone its American counterparts, and is now taking over their world.