06 February 2006

TD Waterhouse & Ameritrade to Operate as Separate Entities through 2006

  
Barron's, Theresa W. Carey & Kathy Yakal

Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse closed their consolidation deal Jan. 25. The company is now called TD Ameritrade Holding and its shares trade under Ameritrade's ticker symbol, AMTD.

Online-brokerage customers won't notice any changes for several months. Although the takeover is complete from a financial standpoint, the two brokerages will continue to operate as separate entities through 2006. Katrina Becker, TD Ameritrade's director of communications, says that the integration will take about 12 months. In the meantime, TD Waterhouse continues to solicit new customers. Barron's will review the offerings separately in our online-broker review, even though the TD Waterhouse site will no longer exist in the 2007 review.

"Ameritrade will be the platform you'll see once the consolidation is completed. We will begin integrating key tools from the TD Waterhouse platform later this year, and plan to complete the back-end conversion in 12 months," Becker says. This process mirrors the Datek conversion, which significantly improved Ameritrade's offerings for active traders.
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