Greed Is Good (at TD Bank?)

TD Bank announced additional layoffs both in their US and Canadian operations. Listed below are some interesting online comments from observers who are not fond of TD Bank or the decision to layoff employees...
"Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank... Give a man a bank and he can rob the world."

"The TD Bank has been cutting staffing and FTE (full-time equivalent) hours in the branch banks for the past 4-5 years now. Ask any Branch manager that is willing to say something about this and you will find out that in the same of some "productivity" measure most branches barely have enough staffing compliment to keep a branch open according to the compliance standards set by the TD banks themselves."

"This is a problem that starts with shareholders. Shareholders expect a certain return; call it $1B in profits. Why $1B; so that their shares keep their value and the Corporation can keep paying dividends to keep them happy. When the bank can no longer meet expectations of their forecasts, they have to reduce their largest expense; salaries. The problem; Greed. Executives will do whatever they have to keep their jobs, and their 7 or 8 figure salaries. Do they need this much money; absolutely not, and they could keep ten, or hundreds of jobs if they each took a pay cut. But why would they? Their objectives are to meet very aggressive forecasts, in an economic climate that is quite unstable with potential downside. So, the question is why not set a more realistic forecast, that is risk weighted, and would not upset analysts and investors. Again, it comes to shareholder greed, and the need for executives to keep them happy. It's a circular loop, that at the end of the day, comes down to profits. Although profits are important to reinvest in the company, when you hold significant cash balances, you can have a bad year. Agreed? Certainly the case at the public company that I worked at!"

"TD makes billions but will give you next to zero return on your savings."

"Make $2B profit, cut staff. Disgusting."

"As a shareholder I do feel the expenditure of millions on consultants to tell a business that maintains its own HR department and has row after row of executives that could do an in-house review does not speak well of senior management that are paid to run the business. I doubt you will find the report suggested the layoff of any of the executive management or the rollback of any bonus programs for same. As for those laid off, they are but the victims of the CEO protecting his pay package."

" Restructuring 101, Rule 1: Restructuring begins at the level immediately below yourself."

"You work at TD, so does someone I know. My friend knows a whole whack of people at the lower levels that have been shown the door or told their job will no longer exist.
TD has been cutting, cutting and cutting for some time -- and yet the "goals" for the front line staff have been increased substantially -- my friend says there are at lot of really stressed out, really unhappy employees. And of course a lot of these back-office function cuts that have been going on only make it worse, since now it takes forever to reach someone or get something done from the back-office. I also know a person in the mutual fund industry - his comment is that TD is by far the slowest when it comes to transferring monies -- once again, back-office cuts. Obviously these are only some of the stores -- I have a lot of other ones that are a lot nastier, but suffice to say, this bank has cut too deep, and yet continues to cut further. I've been a client for over 30 years, and have a lot of TD shares, but I'm very seriously considering abandoning ship on both fronts. Not happy with the direction I see them going in."