TD Speeds Up CEO Handoff, Cuts Pay for More Than 40 Executives

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(Bloomberg) — Toronto-Dominion Bank is moving up the start date for its new chief executive officer, Raymond Chun, by two months and slashed executives’ pay in the wake of its historic and costly money-laundering scandal. 

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Five long-serving directors will also leave the bank’s board and the chair, Alan MacGibbon, will step down and retire as a director by the end of the year, Toronto-Dominion said in a statement Friday. Toronto-Dominion said 41 executives, including many who have already left the bank, saw their bonus pay slashed last year, resulting in total reductions of C$30 million ($21 million).  

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“TD has adjusted executive compensation to reflect the seriousness of the US AML failures, the associated costs to the bank and the limitations imposed on the US retail business,” according to the statement. 

Longtime executive Chun, who has run TD’s Canadian retail banking division, its wealth-management and insurance unit, and its online brokerage, will now take over from Bharat Masrani on Feb. 1 instead of April 10.

“Ray has moved quickly and decisively to launch a review of our strategy, operations, and investments, and has engaged with customers, clients and colleagues across the Bank. We are excited to have Ray take the helm and lead TD into the future,” MacGibbon said in the statement. 

Masrani, who has been chief executive officer of TD since 2014, received no variable compensation beyond his base salary last year, reducing his overall pay to C$1.5 million, down from C$13.3 million a year earlier, the statement said.

It’s a striking difference from what Toronto-Dominion’s board said in last year’s annual proxy circular published in March, when the bank announced that Masrani himself volunteered to take a C$1 million pay cut in recognition of the US regulatory issues. 

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At that time, the board of directors said Masrani had “demonstrated excellent personal leadership and performance through a challenging year.” Investors were already raising questions about whether the board would replace Masrani, but it would be several more months before his successor was named. 

Chun has been leading a review of strategy at the company, which suspended its medium-term financial targets in December. Just two months earlier, Canada’s No. 2 lender pleaded guilty to a series of charges brought by US authorities over its failure to catch money laundering by drug cartels and other criminals. 

Costly Probes

The bank agreed to pay almost $3.1 billion in fines as part of the settlement with law enforcement and regulators, but the scandal has cost TD far more than that. 

It paid a $200 million breakup fee in 2023 when it was forced to call off its $13.4 billion acquisition of Memphis, Tennessee-based First Horizon Corp. after it became evident that regulators would not approve the transaction amid the money-laundering probes. 

Toronto-Dominion also spent $350 million to improve its compliance programs last year and said it expects to spend an additional $500 million on those efforts this year.

And the lender, which launched an ambitious US expansion about 20 years ago and became one of the 10 largest banks in the country, is now barred from expanding its American retail business beyond its current size. 

To stay under the regulatory limit on its assets, Toronto-Dominion is exiting some US lending businesses and repositioning that division’s securities portfolio, changes the bank has said will reduce its earnings and lead to one-time costs of as much as $1.5 billion after taxes. 

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