Toronto-Dominion Bank is hiring Taylan Turan as its new chief operating officer and also revamping its legal team.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Toronto-Dominion Bank TD-T is hiring a chief operating officer with global banking experience and also revamping its legal team, as chief executive officer Ray Chun repositions the bank to move past its U.S. scandal and to improve its internal culture.
TD is hiring Taylan Turan from HSBC Holdings Plc as its COO, and also naming Paul Whitehead, currently TD’s head of Canadian branch banking, as his deputy. Mr. Turan was head of global head of retail banking at HSBC and has worked for the bank in both London and Turkey over the last 15 years. He is moving to Toronto.
In his new role, Mr. Whitehead becomes global head of client and colleague experience and marketing.
TD is also shaking up its legal team, with general counsel Jane Langford leaving the bank. To fill the hole, TD is hiring from outside again, bringing on Simon Fish, the former general counsel at Bank of Montreal.
As part of the changes, Christine Morris, a senior executive vice-president who has been with the bank for three decades is retiring. During her career, Ms. Morris has been COO of the Canadian personal bank and joined TD’s executive team in 2021.
The latest hires extend an overhaul of the bank’s executive team and board of directors that has played out over the past year, after TD pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in the United States.
On top of naming Mr. Chun, a relatively unknown insider, as CEO, TD has appointed John MacIntyre as its new board chair, and also appointed five new directors: Elio Luongo, Nathalie Palladitcheff, Frank Pearn, Paul Wirth and Ana Arsov.
The governance changes are designed to re-orient the bank in the wake of its money-laundering scandal and to fix a cultural shift that took hold inside the bank over the last decade. Under former CEO Bharat Masrani‘s leadership, TD added increasingly dense layers of bureaucracy that stifled decision-making, and before the recent board and executive changes, a number of highly-respected leaders had left the institution, upending succession planning.
The new COO, Mr. Turan, has been tasked with transforming key operations and reducing complexity, according to an internal memo TD sent to employees, and he will set up a transformation office that will emphasize speed, simplicity and efficiency.
Lately, investors have rewarded TD for its overhaul. Since January the bank’s shares have climbed 37 per cent higher, outperforming its Big Six bank peers.
However, TD’s growth is still hampered by an asset cap on its U.S. business, which effectively limits the bank from expanding its American retail banking division until its anti-money-laundering programs are deemed acceptable by regulators. Upgrading these systems and adding staff is an expensive task. The bank also paid more than US$3-billion in fines as part of its guilty plea with the U.S. Department of Justice.
So far, TD has found alternative ways to appease shareholders, including selling its stake in U.S. investment dealer Charles Schwab Corp. for about US$14-billion. TD has earmarked the proceeds for share buybacks, which will return capital to shareholders, and for investing in other businesses.
Mr. Chun is also holding an investor day this month to provide investors with a strategy road map for his tenure. The timing of this update aligns with Mr. MacIntyre’s assumption of the board chair role, adding to the narrative that TD is trying to forge a new path forward.
Mr. Taylan, the new COO, most recently oversaw a global integration of international wealth and premier banking at HSBC, and before that he worked at Citigroup and Barclays.
Mr. Fish, the new general counsel, retired from Bank of Montreal after 15 years and he has also worked at Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Inco Ltd., and Vale throughout his career.