RBC Reclaims Crown From Toronto-Dominion as Biggest Canada Bank

(Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Canada reclaimed the nation's largest lender title, ousting Toronto-Dominion Bank to recapture the top spot it has owned for most of the past 100 years.

Royal Bank had C$1.28 trillion ($996 billion) in assets at the end of the fiscal first quarter, eclipsing Toronto-Dominion's C$1.26 trillion, according to financial statements. The Toronto-based banks have traded the No. 1 ranking for about five years, with Toronto-Dominion first surpassing Royal Bank at the end of 2013 following a decade-long expansion in U.S. consumer lending.

Royal Bank first became Canada's largest lender shortly after World War I, leapfrogging Bank of Montreal following a series of mergers and expansions that helped it develop from a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based merchant bank into a national institution. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce briefly challenged Royal Bank for No. 1 in the late 1990s.

To contact the reporter on this story: Doug Alexander in Toronto at dalexander3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Steve Dickson

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