A person walks past a TD Bank sign in the financial district in Toronto on Sept. 20, 2022.Alex Lupul/The Canadian Press
Toronto-Dominion Bank is sending a senior executive south of the border to accelerate its U.S. expansion and marshal the resources TD acquired from Cowen Inc. for US$1.3-billion last year.
Sante Corona, who became co-head of TD’s global equity capital markets business on March 1 when the Cowen deal closed, relocated to New York as of May 1 to create “seamless connectivity” between TD Securities and TD Cowen’s equity capital markets business, the bank said Friday in an internal memo. Mr. Corona shares his title with Grant Miller, who previously ran Cowen’s capital markets group and is already based in New York.
That memo also announced Kosta Galanis and Chris John, who have been with TD since 2009 and 2011, respectively, had been promoted to co-heads of the bank’s Canadian equity capital markets division
The moves represent TD’s latest effort to integrate Cowen’s roughly 1,700 staff into its own investment banking operations, most notably by placing one TD executive and one Cowen executive in charge of each major division. Last September, one month after the Cowen acquisition was announced, TD said then-Cowen co-president Larry Wieseneck and TD’s co-head of global markets, Tim Wiggan, would become co-heads of global investment banking.
The memo announcing Mr. Corona’s relocation and the promotions of Mr. Galanis and Mr. John came from Mr. Wieseneck and Mr. Wiggan.
TD is refocusing efforts on its decade-long plan to build a stronger cross-border capital markets business after being forced to abandon its US$13.4-billion takeover of Tennessee-based First Horizon Corp. earlier this month. That would have been TD’s largest-ever acquisition and would have provided the Canadian bank with a major foothold in the U.S. Southeast.
Speaking with analysts on a conference call Thursday about TD’s weaker-than-expected second quarter earnings, TD chief executive Bharat Masrani said the integration with Cowen was “well under way.”
In fact, only one day after closing on March 1, Mr. Masrani said TD Cowen acted as bookrunner on its first equity offering and since then, the new division has done so for 13 equity offerings totalling US$3.5-billion.
“This is just the beginning as we leverage our new capabilities in U.S. equities and extend our competitive advantage,” he said.