Barclays Among Bidders For TD Direct Broker 

Barclays has emerged as a surprise potential buyer of TD Direct Investing as its Canadian owner explores a sale, Sky News learns.

Barclays has tabled an offer to buy TD Direct Investing, one of the UK’s biggest retail stockbroking businesses, in a move that if completed would create a more powerful challenger to Hargreaves Lansdown, the market leader.

Sky News has learnt that Barclays is among a small number of bidders which have submitted offers to buy TD Direct, which is wholly owned by the Canadian lender Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank.

If successful, Barclays would be likely to seek to merge TD Direct, which has roughly 200,000 customers, with Barclays Stockbrokers, another significant player in the market.

It would also mark the maiden acquisition by Barclays under Jes Staley, the bank’s new chief executive, at a time when asset sales are dominating the corporate finance agenda in its boardroom.

Sources said, however, Barclays was far from certain to emerge as the eventual buyer of TD Direct and cautioned that its current owner may yet decide to halt the sale process altogether.

One market source suggested that there was “a lack of consensus in the bank about whether to proceed” with a bid, and suggested that significant job cuts could result from a merger of TD Direct and Barclays Stockbrokers.

TD Direct Investing also operates an international arm based in Luxembourg, which the source said had prompted some unease inside Barclays following a series of fines from regulators in recent years related to dealings with offshore clients.

Barclays will be the subject of another multimillion dollar penalty on Monday when it settles with a US regulator over the conduct of one of its dark pools, a private share trading venue.

TD Bank entered the UK share dealing market with the opening of Green Line Investor Services in 1997, and has owned the entirety of TD Direct since 2010, when it acquired the remaining 25% of the business from BGL BNP Paribas in France.

A string of takeovers and a joint venture with Nat West Stockbrokers struck in 2002 helped to build TD Direct into one of the UK’s largest brokers, and it now has roughly £13bn of customer assets under administration.

Barclays Stockbrokers manages an asset pool of around £15bn, meaning that a combined group would still trail in the wake of the much larger Hargreaves Lansdown.

Under Mr Staley, who will present further details of his strategy for Barclays at its full-year results in the coming weeks, the bank is expected to accelerate its restructuring, potentially involving the sale of part or all of its large business in South Africa.

A TD Bank Group spokesman said it did not “comment on rumour or speculation”, while Barclays also declined to comment.

Source: Sky News – Barclays Among Bidders For TD Direct Broker

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