Tuesday’s Headlines: TD Bank looks to expand its wealth management in the U.S.

Toronto-Dominion Bank is looking toward the U.S. market as it seeks to grow its mutual fund and investment advice business, according to a Businessweek story. The second largest Canadian lender has made remarkable inroads in its southern neighbor – launching 1,300 branches in the past seven years and spending $25 billion to open retail locations and buy up other banks – all focused on urban, affluent areas.

TD Bank currently offers investment advice through TD Ameritrade, in which it owns a 45 percent stake and which usually serves clients with less than $750,000 in assets. The bank will have more than 2,000 wealth advisers in Canada by the end of this year, up slightly from 2011, and has invested heavily in technology and infrastructure in the business.

Wealth management jives with the bank’s home, auto, life and health insurance business, which earned C$541 million last year, as there are opportunities to sell insurance to wealth management clients, according to the bank’s CEO.

 

Other News:

UBS, which sold its Brazilian lending unit in 2009, may buy another. [Businessweek]

Analysts predict the CEOs of Barclays and HSBC will probably receive their bonus even as their counterparts at state-backed lenders are forced to forgo theirs. [Businessweek]

Spain’s Santander said Q4 profits plunged 98 percent on tougher real estate-loss rules and earnings in the UK and Brazil. [WSJ]

Foreign governments were fighting to end the Volcker Rule. [DealBook]

Commerzbank’s CEO thought he had acted "honorably" when the bank did not to pay bonuses to 104 investment bankers. [NY Times]

Old Mutual, based in London, and Sanlam, of South Africa, are considering setting up a joint venture to buy a J.P. Morgan South African unit that administers investments for fund managers. [Reuters]

Swiss hedge fund company Gottex will cut costs by 15 percent this year after assets fell by $1 billion to $7.34 billion. [Reuters]

Galileo, the hedge fund run by the London-based Centaur which aimed to make money on sports bets, closed. [The Huffington Post]