Category: Canada

TORONTO — TD Bank Group is speeding up its plan to install its new chief executive and overhauling its board as it continues to deal with the fallout of its anti-money laundering failures in the United States.

The bank, which also announced it was slashing executive bonuses, said Friday that Raymond Chun would take over the CEO role from Bharat Masrani on Feb. 1 rather than April 10 as previously announced.

It said five board members appointed before 2020 will be leaving the bank as it announced four new board nominations. Alan MacGibbon, who was appointed board chair less than a year ago but served as a director since 2014, will step down from both positions at the end of the year.

MacGibbon signalled the bank was looking to put the past behind it as he welcomed the accelerated path to Chun taking over.

“Ray has moved quickly and decisively to launch a review of our strategy, operations, and investments … we are excited to have Ray take the helm and lead TD into the future.”

TD said Masrani will remain available in an advisory capacity until the end of July, while MacGibbon thanked him for his almost four decades of service to the bank.

Along with new board members, TD said it was appointing new chairs to four of its five committees.

The bank has also cut bonuses for 41 executives, including many who are no longer with the bank, to reflect the seriousness of the failures, the associated costs to the bank and the limitations imposed on the U.S. retail business.

The bank says Masrani’s total direct compensation for 2024 has been slashed to $1.5 million, down 89 per cent compared with his 2023 pay of $13.3 million, which itself was cut by $1 million.

Variable compensation was cut by at least 25 per cent from their target for all other members of the senior executive team, it said.

The changes come after TD agreed in October to pay fines totalling more than $4.23 billion after pleading guilty to multiple charges in the U.S. related to its anti-money laundering failings over the past decade. Regulators also imposed an asset growth cap on its U.S. retail banking operations.

As part of the settlement, TD was also required to undertake a review of its board of directors and management to ensure adequate oversight of its U.S. operations.

The new director nominations include Frank Pearn, who oversaw compliance and operational risk at JP Morgan Chase and Co., and Paul Wirth, who served as global controller for Morgan Stanley.

The scale of the board changes is highly unusual, said Richard Leblanc, governance professor at York University.

“In 30 years in the field, I’ve not seen wholesale change like this, particularly chairs of committees,” he said.

“It’s rather unprecedented.”

He said regulatory pressure could well have led to the scale of changes at the top.

“I would not at all be surprised if one of the regulators wanted renewed board and committee leadership, but not to include past directors, to include a fresh set of eyes as committee and board chairs.”

The bank has also reduced the term lengths for board members, instituting a two-year extension after the first decade, down from a five-year extension.

The change is a good idea and puts the bank more in line with international standards, said Leblanc.

“You get regular renewal of these individuals,” he said. “I think other banks will be looking at the governance reforms that TD has implemented.”

Jefferies analyst John Aiken welcomed the accelerated leadership changes and noted other banks may also move to change their board composition to create more focus on risk management and compliance.

“We view these announcements positively as it infers that TD’s remediation path will remain a big push and could spell some relief for investors,” he said in a note.

TD’s share price was up almost five per cent in mid-afternoon trading Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 17, 2025.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TD)

Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press

The largest majority-Indigenous-owned public company in Canada, Nations Royalty, was founded by the self-governing Nisga’a Nation from the Nass Valley in BC’s Northwest.

Their current portfolio includes mining assets with royalties valued at US$214 million.

The Nisga’a Nation owns 77 per cent of Nations Royalty, and several of their representatives attended the BC Natural Resources Forum held at the Prince George Civic Centre from Jan. 14 to 16. Kody Penner, vice president of corporate development, featured as a headline speaker during the Indigenous Successes in Northern BC panel discussion.

Through the company’s business model, the royalty assets are still owned by Indigenous communities, but the maximum value of their mining royalty is unlocked through a portfolio of diversified royalties – lowering the risk associated with holding a single asset. Many mining royalties owned by Indigenous groups today are not yet in production, but through Nations Royalty, they would be able to access the present value.

Nations Royalty’s foundation starts with the royalties Nisga’a Nation has in place in respect of the following properties: 

• The high-grade Brucejack gold mine operated by Pretium Resources Inc., a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Newmont Corporation, a large underground gold mine in Canada; 
• The KSM Copper-Gold-Silver-Molybdenum deposit, currently in development by Seabridge Gold Inc., the largest, undeveloped yet fully permitted gold and copper project in the world, with almost 50 million ounces of gold and more than seven billion pounds of copper in reserves alone;
• The Premier Gold Project and Red Mountain Gold Deposit, in construction by Ascot Resources Ltd., and; 
• The Kitsault Molybdenum Deposit, a large, fully permitted brownfield site owned and being actively advanced by New Moly LLC, majority-owned by Resource Capital Fund VI L.P. 

Nations Royalty is eager to build further Indigenous capacity and representation in the corporate world.

“Indigenous people have not been included in the capital markets for years,” Kody Penner, Nations Royalty vice president of corporate development, said as he sat down with The Citizen at the Natural Resources Forum on Thursday morning.

“Nations Royalty is the first and largest majority-Indigenous owned publicly traded company in Canada. We trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture. You can go buy some of our shares if you’d like and that’s never been done before. We’re the only ones and we certainly hope we’re not the last. We want to help build Indigenous capacity in the public markets so they can get access to the risk capital they need to build projects in their territories.”

This is a new step for Indigenous peoples, he added.

“We want people to get used to the idea of Indigenous people being wealthy,” Penner said.

“They can be project owners right from the get-go. Indigenous people deserve this opportunity.”

The first priority of Nations Royalty is share-holder return which means growing the Nisga’a Nations wealth.

“The second is to build Indigenous capacity,” Penner said. “We have a majority-Indigenous board, we have a majority-Indigenous management team and we want to teach Indigenous people how to utilize the public markets to grow these businesses from the ground up.”

And Nations Royalty can show them how to do that, he added.

“The more royalties you’re able to pool into a single company, the higher your valuation goes, because essentially you’re lowering risk on any single royalty – it’s kind of like a mutual fund,” Penner explained.

“The mutual fund owns a little bit of many stocks. That’s much less risky than putting all your money into one stock because if that stock flops you go to zero but with a mutual fund if one of those stocks flop you still getting benefits from the other stocks in the fund. It’s exactly the same thing in the royalty space and that’s what we do for Indigenous groups.”

Penner is a citizen of the Tahltan Nation, neighbours of the Nisga’a Nation. He grew up in the mining industry and was an underground miner at Newmount’s Brucejack mine. With a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia, Penner is also vice chair of the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation, where he has helped lead the company through major strategic and operational changes by enhancing governance and management structures.

While the mining royalty concept is not new, Nations Royalty is different as it’s able to create new pathways for wealth generation and community development for Indigenous peoples.  

“I like to say Nations Royalty does three main things for Indigenous groups,” Penner said. “First, frontload that capital so Indigenous groups can be partners right from the beginning. Second, lower their financial risk by diversifying their portfolio royalties. And third, give them a nice return as we come together.”

Nations Royalty provides a service to Indigenous groups where they offer their assistance at no cost to help them negotiate for better royalty structures in their impact benefit agreements, which is the contract between a resource extraction company and an Indigenous community.

“Imagine this: you are an Indigenous group in a remote location and now you have a big mine there,” Penner said.

“Now you are negotiating against professional financiers, geologists, engineers, lawyers – they know what they got – they’re professionals – and I’m not saying chief and councils aren’t professionals but they have a million things to think about – community, Elders, land claims – and unless they spend their time in the finance realm, which is part of chief and councils duties but not all of it – it’s tough negotiating against these groups. The asymmetry between groups is just ridiculous. We help groups negotiate in these circumstances for free. We would like to partner with them at the end when they accomplish everything but even if that doesn’t happen a rising tide lifts all boats and if you start to see more agreements with better structures being placed around Canada that helps Indigenous people in general… and we’ve accomplished our mission. So that’s a big thing that we do, and we spend a lot of time doing it – helping Indigenous groups negotiate for better outcomes. We gotta fight fire with fire.”

Nations Royalty is also backed by BC billionaire Frank Giustra, one of Canada’s most successful mining entrepreneurs, founder of Lionsgate Entertainment, Fiore Group CEO and a recent inductee into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

For more information about Nations Royalty visit nationsroyalty.ca/.

Toronto Stock Exchange-listed mining and exploration junior Pambili Natural Resources Corporation has discovered a promising new development at its Golden Valley Mine (GVM) in Bulawayo, confirming the down-dip extension of gold mineralization at significant widths and grades, Mining Zimbabwe can report.

By Rudairo Mapuranga

The results from the company’s ongoing drilling program have excited the company, potentially reshaping the future of this historic mine.

The latest assays, conducted by Antech Laboratories in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe, revealed that Hole EADD001 intercepted a broad zone of sulphide mineralization, returning an intersection of 1.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold over an impressive width of 17.2 meters. This critical find points to economic potential in the deeper unmined sulphides, offering a promising outlook for the future of the Golden Valley Mine.

Jon Harris, Pambili’s CEO, expressed his enthusiasm for the results, stating that his company is excited about the mine’s future.

“The Pambili team is highly encouraged by the grades and widths of gold mineralization encountered in the unmined sulphides beneath the historic workings at our Golden Valley Mine,” he said.

According to Harris, what makes this discovery particularly noteworthy is the structure of the mineralization. The upper mineralized zone returned 2.19 meters at 1.57 g/t gold, while the lower zone was even more promising, delivering 7 meters at 2 g/t gold. A standout highlight within this lower zone is a 2-meter section yielding 3.86 g/t gold, a high-grade intersection that adds considerable weight to the economic viability of the deposit. The zones are separated by a 6-meter wide stretch of internal waste with a lower grade of 0.29 g/t gold.

Historically, Golden Valley has produced around 2,500 ounces of gold at an average grade of 9 g/t, focusing mainly on shallow oxide mineralization. However, this recent discovery shifts attention to the deeper sulphides, where the company believes substantial untapped potential lies.

Harris emphasized the importance of these findings, stating that the company’s focus is now on establishing whether the potential scale of gold mineralization at Golden Valley is far more significant than previously recognized.

“With regional sulphide mineralization continuing to depths of more than 1 km, our focus is now on establishing whether the potential scale of gold mineralization at GVM is far more significant than previously recognized,” he said.

The Pambili CEO said that to explore this potential further, Pambili plans to develop a cross-cut from the existing sub-vertical shaft, aiming to expose both the upper mineralized zone and the up-dip extension of the lower zone. This step is crucial for obtaining metallurgical samples to assess the recoverability of the sulphide mineralization.

If recoverable grades are confirmed, according to Harris, the company intends to launch an on-strike development program, opening up new areas of the mine for further exploration and extraction.

“Our next phase is to extend the development of the planned cross-cuts and learn more about the extent of this anomalous zone of mineralization,” Harris said, outlining the company’s forward-looking strategy.

The discovery of down-dip extensions at Golden Valley marks a pivotal moment for Pambili Natural Resources. As the company moves to assess the true scale of these sulphide deposits, the potential for high-grade, deep gold resources could propel Golden Valley into a new era of production. These recent assay results, with their broad intersections and consistent grades, provide a solid technical foundation for future growth.

With ongoing exploration and strategic development, Pambili is poised to redefine the economic landscape of its Golden Valley Mine, positioning it as a critical player in Zimbabwe’s gold mining industry. As Harris concluded, “We look forward to learning more about the extent of the anomalous zone as we extend the development.”