TD Waterhouse hopes for 20% of Irish broker market

CANADIAN brokerage TD Waterhouse is hopeful of benefiting from the strong reputation its country has established during the current recession, by building up a 20% share of the Irish broker market within the next three years.

The company – the international brokerage subsidiary of leading Canadian banking group TD Bank Financial Group (Toronto Dominion Bank) – yesterday formally launched its new online share trading service for Irish investors.

Although TD’s chief executive Angus Rigby claims consolidation in both the banking and broking sectors in Ireland is inevitable, he said that his company will not be part of the shake-up.

“Although we’ve made some acquisitions in growing our market share in Britain, we’re not interested in that strategy in Ireland at the moment. Online is the only space we’re interested in – it’s what we do and we feel we do it better than anyone else,” Mr Rigby said.

It is also, he added, the reason why TD can offer cheaper trading rates than most of its Irish-based competitors (a frequent trader rate of €15 and a standard trading rate of €20 per trade up to the value of €100,000, for example). Mr Rigby also said that the current market conditions weren’t enough to make TD postpone its entry into Ireland.

“People are increasingly taking interest in which banks are safer with better credit ratings and how to diversify their investments. So, while it may take a while for the value of transactions with us to pick up, the volume side of things should be strong from early on.”

On the Irish economy, he said that the first real green shoots of recovery should be seen next year; while he called the NAMA initiative a necessity (albeit one which might have been created earlier) and had similar feelings regarding a positive vote in the Lisbon Treaty.