TD Waterhouse lifts Asian profile
TD Waterhouse will lift its profile in the Asian region with alliances in India and Ja-pan offering online trading and financial services.
TD Waterhouse will lift its profile in the Asian region with alliances in India and Ja-pan offering online trading and financial services.
The joint venture in India, with Tata Finance, the finance arm of India's Tata group, will launch online discount broking in India at a time when authorities prepare regu-lations to cope with the new form of trading.
TD Waterhouse (TDW) will invest about US$16 million in return for a 49 per cent stake in Tata Finance Securities. It is expected the service will be online next year af-ter the release of relevant guidelines later this month.
"There are about 400,000 trades a day, 25 million investors and $25 billion of mutual funds under management," says TDW chief executive Stephen McDonald.
The partners expect to capture 10 to 20 per cent of total trades in India within three years but will be restricted by the limited number of internet accounts with 25 million investors and only half a million internet accounts, McDonald says.
In Japan, TDW will team up with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (BTM) to form a new company, BTM-TD Waterhouse Securities, which will offer domestic equities in the short term, with an expansion into US equities after the first year.
TDW will hold a 45 per cent stake and BTM the remaining 55 percent however dis-cussions are underway with other Japanese broking and securities firms to invest in the joint venture.
TDW estimates the Japanese market could grow to $330bn in the next five years and McDonald says the aim is to capture over 10 per cent of Japan's retail online broking market in the first five years.
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