Buy American

It is a rich bit of irony. Back in 1964, Finance Minister Walter Gordon sowed the seeds of what would eventually become Canada’s banking oligopoly when he imposed a 10 percent ownership limit on Canadian banks, ostensibly to protect Toronto-Dominion Bank from the clutches of Wall Street giant Chase Manhattan. The tactic worked: Chase Manhattan retreated and Canada’s banks remain widely held. Four decades later, the tables have turned. TD, Canada’s second biggest bank by assets, has launched an aggressive assault into the lucrative U.S. market that is unprecedented in this country’s banking history. Today, TD Bank has the largest U.S. presence of any Canadian financial institution with 1,300 retail branches (compared to 1,150 in Canada). That is not quite ubiquitous in a country littered with 7,800 banking institutions, but enough to rank TD ninth largest in the United States, and sixth overall in North America.