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Banking, finance, and taxes

TD Ameritrade (AMTD) Eying E*Trade (ETFC) Buy-Out?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

The head of TD Ameritrade (AMTD) today indicated that his firm might have an interest in buying troubled discount broker E*Trade. AMTD might get quite a deal  "We like their retail business but we must figure out a way that makes sense for both sets of shareholders," the AMTD told CNBC according to a report at MarketWatch.

Could E*Trade’s brokerage clients be separated from it banking unit? The mortgage-related problems in he company’s banking business are what caused the large write-offs that have taken ETFC’s shares down.

TD Ameritrade currently has a market cap of $11.6 billion to E*Trade’s $2.3 billion. If ETFC could spin-off the brokerage business and merge it into AMTD, it might have a valuable asset to give its shareholders–TD Ameritrade shares. But, it would take a fair amount of financial engineering to set the banking business up on its own. Its value in the market is probably nil.

But, if E*Trade’s troubles continue, moving its shareholders into AMTD stock might be the safest haven the company can find for them.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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