TD Acquires Cowen
Any thoughts on this Acquisition?
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What happens to a Owen interns?
Interns named Owen are escorted directly to the incinerators. Sorry boss, pick a better name next time.
bump
Another commercial bank with a historically weak Cap Markets / Advisory franchise trying to buy their way to a full service investment bank. Reminds me of the time Uncle Randy came out of the fishing shed with a steel dildo and battered my Aunty Clara over the head with it until she confessed to being a 3,000,000 year old dinosaur from the Paleolithic Era who was seeking about Tree Fiddy in change so she could take the time travel bus back home.
Go back to Reddit
Painfully unfunny
But he's so random and quirky tho! Potato.
Touch grass
o
I hate redditors so much it's unreal
The acquisition makes a lot of sense from my POV.
If you’re TD, you’re racing the other Canadian Banks for the fastest US growth right now, and it’s tough to grow fast in IB/CM organically at their size/footprint, so large acquisitions like this one help them increase their pace.
My only questions/thoughts are essentially, why wouldn’t they try to go bigger than Cowen? They’re going to have to do basically this transaction again every 2-3 years to keep the growth coming, and it’ll end up being too many moving parts to integrate, rather than just making one big acquisition of another american full-service investment bank and focusing on making that transformational integration work such as when TD merged with Canada Trust.
when this closes in 2023, what do you think the acquisition will place TD to it's competitors. In your opinion, will it surpass any banks that you can think of?
Doubt it, not transformational enough of an acquisition to move it up like that. I would say it just helps it maintain its current growth/position among its Canadian peers who are also racing for US growth (despite all Big 5 Canadian banks having made recent acquisition announcements in the US for growth).
Canadian investors hate when they do this. They prefer super boring Canadian banks. But Canadian banks have such strong balance sheets they do from time to time. So shallowing a bigger acquisition would be even harder and none of the large EBs would like the style it would bring.
In reality European banks are in deep shit and Canadian banks should charge in, but again investors in them prefer boring stuff.
I think the answer to this is they wanted to acquire a bank that didn’t have significant overlap with their existing coverage and revenue streams. Cowen is strong in ECM - TD has a really weak US ECM presence.
I'm not convinced much of the IB talent from Cowen will want to work for TD. Dissimilar cultures, styles and growth strategies.
Cowen does a lot of weed stuff, I wonder if this will change that?
Doubt it, TD Commercial lends to cannabis companies already in Canada, just under a very restricted white paper.
Can we get an 'L' in chat for all our Cowen Elite Boutique bois that now will be working for 'Toronto-Dominion Bank" ?
I left a while ago, haven't talked to anyone from Cowen since. I have had three people from the firm reach out since the acquisition was announced.
Makes sense from a growth point of view. But the firms are completely different in their culture. TD probably has the best culture on the street and Cowen is on the other end. Curious to see how it will play out.
Several other large MM with balance sheets that compete with RBC like Wells Fargo
Aren't Jefferies and Piper Sandler MM balance sheet banks also?
Stifel also has a balance sheet
Not really. RBC, while BS-leaning and heavy, has superior M&A advisory. I have a feeling most of Cowen's M&A talent won't be sticking around long. The Portico guys can't be that stoked for this.
Trying to build out their investment banking presence, especially in ECM
Thats what cowen gets for rejecting me after a supderday
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