(April 26 – 10:00 ET) – TD Waterhouse Group Inc. is cutting as many as 1,500 jobs as it seeks to slash costs. The company also plans raise prices, in an effort to salvage its bottom line.

The firm has reduced its global workforce from 8,180 associates in February to approximately 7,500 at April 30.

For the third fiscal quarter of 2001, its goal is to cut another 500 jobs. According to the company, if current market conditions persist it will cut another 300 jobs by October 31.

TD Waterhouse also plans to extract operating efficiencies through the use of technology, and employ customer segmentation to make every customer profitable. It hopes to realize these initiatives without any significant restructuring charges.

Steve McDonald, CEO of TD Waterhouse, says the combination of expense and revenue initiatives is designed to increase the firm’s annualized pre-tax income by US$200 million by calendar year-end. The firm expects to see annualized improvement of US$175 million in pre-tax income by the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001 through infrastructure expense reductions of US$125 million, as well as segmented pricing adjustments that will provide additional annual revenue of at least US$50 million. The firm anticipates the remaining US$25 million will be achieved during the first fiscal quarter of 2002.

“Market volatility and declining share valuations have pushed many of our customers to the sidelines and resulted in decreased trading activity and margin borrowing,” McDonald said. “Our revenue is still derived primarily from trading and margin interest.”

“The impact of these initiatives in the current quarter is modest. However, in the third fiscal quarter of 2001, we will see the impact of 45% of the expense reduction initiatives, and by the end of the fourth fiscal quarter of 2001, all but $25 million of the $200 million initiative should be achieved,” McDonald said.

“Based on this, we believe we are on the way to achieving our pre-tax, pre-marketing operating margin goal of 30% by the end of the fourth fiscal quarter of 2001.”