TD Purchases Electronic Bond Trading Platform

Toronto-Dominion Bank is acquiring electronic fixed-income trading company Headlands Tech Global Markets LLC in an attempt to further expand into municipal and corporate bond markets as well as bring a higher degree of automation to its existing bond-trading platform. Chicago-based Headlands owns proprietary trading software that facilitates the electronic trading of municipal and corporate bonds. All 15 of Headlands’ employees, including co-chief executives Martin Mannion and Matthew Schrager, will join TD when the deal closes. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2021, subject to regulatory approvals. TD had long intended to increase the efficiency of its fixed-income trading platform, which still relied on manual entries in order to execute trades. But the search for the right company to acquire took years, according to Moti Jungreis, vice-chair and head of global markets at TD Securities.