Toronto Dominion Bank (TD)

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$TD Canada's big banks go south; US town faces bankruptcy
The New York Times has a story today about Canadian banks, and how with their solid balance sheets some of them are looking to the United States for investments.
For example, last week Toronto-Dominion bank agreed to pay $6.3 billion US for Chrysler Financial and earlier the Bank of Montreal Milwaukee-based bank Marshall & Ilsley for $4.1 billion US.
But the NYT story (read it here) expects little good to come from these purchases.
"We don't think it's a great idea for Canadian banks to be expanding into the American market," J. Bradley Smith, the head of research at Stonecap Securities in Toronto was quoted as saying in the article. "From a cultural perspective, we're very similar. But from a management perspective, the American market is not an easy threshold to cross."
But Canadian banks have too much money and nowhere to spend it.
"The banks simply have no choice," said Louis Gagnon, an associate professor of finance at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. "They have to go beyond our borders to grow and the only market that makes sense is the United States."
But while Canadian banks may have more money than they know what to do with another town in the U.S. may be headed for bankruptcy.
In another NYT story, the city of Hamtramck, Michigan, just outside Detroit is just praying it won't snow, because they can't afford to go over-budget on snowplowing. They figure they can make it to March 1 - maybe. Read that story here.

Read the complete post at http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/businesseditor/archive/2010/12/28/canada-s-big-banks-go-south-us-town-faces-bankruptcy.aspx