Dive Brief:

• Teri Currie, TD’s group head of Canadian personal banking, will retire at the end of January, the bank announced Thursday, as it rolled out several management changes, sparking talk of a shift in succession planning. Currie will join TD's U.S. board of directors, effective Feb. 1.
• Greg Braca, the bank’s U.S. CEO, will become vice chair of TD Bank in the U.S. — a position the bank created for him — where he will leverage his connections to drive business development, the bank said. Succeeding him as U.S. CEO is Leo Salom, who had been leading TD’s wealth management and insurance business. Braca and Salom’s role changes are effective Jan. 1.
• Currie and Braca had both been seen as potential successors to TD CEO Bharat Masrani, 65. Masrani has led Canada’s largest bank since 2014. The bank revamped his pay agreement in 2019 to give him incentives to stay in the role through the end of 2023, according to The Globe and Mail.

Dive Insight:

TD is hardly the only top-10 U.S. bank to shuffle its leadership this year. Bank of America in September shifted the roles of more than a dozen executives after two longtime leaders — Vice Chair Anne Finucane and Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag — announced they would retire at the end of the year.

JPMorgan Chase in May promoted Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak to co-lead the bank’s consumer and community banking unit, setting up a potential two-way race to succeed CEO Jamie Dimon. The move came as the bank’s co-president, Gordon Smith, announced his upcoming retirement. 

Morgan Stanley, in the same week, named Ted Pick and Andy Saperstein co-presidents of the bank and, in the same breath, tapped a new CFO, chief operating officer and co-head of strategy.

Citi’s Jane Fraser in March became the first woman to lead a U.S.-based Wall Street bank, in a move that had been announced in September 2020.

At the same time, at least two big banks this year have indicated they are locking down their top spots over the long term. Goldman Sachs last week offered CEO David Solomon a restricted stock package that could top out at more than $50 million if he stays through October 2026.

JPMorgan in July gave Dimon a "special award" of 1.5 million share options that similarly could be worth $50 million if he were to hold them through July 2031. The CEO said as recently as August that he sees himself atop the bank for at least five more years — though maybe not 10. That, of course, complicates the succession picture at the nation’s top bank, where leadership readiness may be merely a series of contingency plans. President Daniel Pinto could step in, for example, if there's an emergency in the short term, or it could tap Lake or Piepszak in a longer-range crisis. 

Thursday’s moves at TD, meanwhile, “[set] the stage for a new rank of leadership,” Ebrahim Poonawala, a Bank of America Securities analyst told The Globe and Mail, adding he thinks Masrani will stay two or three more years.

Another analyst, however, said the moves disrupted a succession plan already thought to be in place. “With Teri’s retirement now announced and Greg moving to a new role … succession is now even more difficult to predict,” Darko Mihelic, a Royal Bank of Canada analyst, said in a note to investors, according to Bloomberg. “Losing some well-known top executives once considered CEO candidates adds to some anxiety about succession.”

To that point, Masrani, in Thursday’s press release, said, “TD has a deep bench of proven executives with the experience and leadership capabilities needed for the future.”

TD on Thursday named Michael Rhodes, the bank’s head of innovation, technology and shared services, to succeed Currie as the head of Canadian personal banking. Raymond Chun, the bank’s president of direct investing, will lead wealth and insurance once Salom ascends to U.S. CEO.

"Michael, Leo and Ray bring significant experience and proven track-records leading critical businesses and functions to their new roles," Masrani said in the release. "Greg has been instrumental in our U.S. businesses and I look forward to his continued contributions to our performance."

Currie, meanwhile, steps down after nearly 35 years with the bank, beginning as a teller at a Calgary branch and rising through a litany of human-resources and marketing roles before taking over Canadian personal banking in 2016.

Thursday's shift is not the first C-suite shuffle TD has seen this year. The bank in June tapped then-CFO Riaz Ahmed to become CEO of TD Securities when longtime executive Bob Dorrance retired from the role. It concurrently promoted Kelvin Tran to CFO.