this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
69 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

7185 readers
324 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories


πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities


πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


πŸ’» Universities


πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping


πŸ—£οΈ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 13 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca 25 points 6 months ago

I can't wait to pay for this in fees, fines and other charges.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

They made over $10B in profit in 2023. Shouldn't be a problem.

[–] Nobody@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

Cost of doing business. Still massive profits.

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Not quite so simple. Converting to USD:

TD has a 5.37% dividend yield, a market cap of 134.46B, and $8.498B in profit.

Doing the math, their earnings are 6.32% of capitalization. They have less than 1% slack in their earnings yield after dividends. That works out to about $1ΒΌB per year in free cashflow. So a $2B fine is roughly 2 years of capital accumulation; a big setback for sure!

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: a very large fraction of the population is one unexpected bill away from insolvency. It doesn't seem unreasonable to impose a similar fear on corporations for actual criminal activity.

Yes, that's me saying that a corporation breaking the law should have to legitimately consider closing it's doors. In some cases, forced closure should be part of the actual penalty.

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't see that as a counterpoint. I think it's reasonable that banks (and corporations, in general) are fined significantly for regulatory violations.

With regulatory capture, most regulations are weak to begin with. And if they don't have teeth, then they're entirely pointless.

Two years of free cashflow is a good fine for serious violations of ethics/regulations, imho. I don't think they're getting off lightly with that, though; it's a significant enough fine that they're incentivized to do better and, even better, acts as a warning shot across the entire industry.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

My (counter) point was that much lesser crimes committed by an individual would have completely destroyed the life of the perpetrator and probably their family. Yet high fives all around when a corporation has to put up with a couple of years of lost growth just because a number is too big for an individual to properly comprehend.

[–] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago

A fine that doesn't hurt the bottom line of the company is just cost of business, I'm for people to see the inside of a solitary confinement cell

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

The punishment for money laundering is a fine? We've truly lost the plot.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago

$10.8 B profit in 2023, $17.2 B profit in 2022. $14 B profit in 2021.

[–] Yezzey@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Isn't there a law that says if a company is caught breaking the law you don't have to pay them?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

Hahahahahahah yeah right. Even if there was, they'd find a way around it.

[–] psvrh@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

If you want to make this stick, don't let them deduct it as a loss on their taxes and really don't let them pass it on as an increase in fees.

The latter is especially important, because if they raise it, the others will to, and they'll be, ah, making bank the next year.

You know what else would be nice? Criminally charging the people responsible.