Bank of Montreal

Bank of Montreal's drive to improve efficiencies has come with a cost: C$357 million, along with more job cuts.

First Horizon, Iberiabank in year's second-biggest bank merger; bank failure in New Jersey is nation's third in a week; smaller banks take a turn swinging the ax; and more from this week's most-read stories.

The team has already built three customer-facing AI tools this year, which it hopes to keep building upon.

Bank of Montreal's push into the U.S. has proved fruitful for its employees — and challenging for a company seeking to get its expenses under control.

In the last two fiscal years, the treasury and payments solutions unit that Haward-Laird runs has had the highest return on equity of all BMO Financial's business lines.

Scotiabank's earnings topped analysts' estimates on a surge in profit in its international-banking division, fueled by a sharpened focus on Latin America. Bank of Montreal, meanwhile, fell short of expectations as growth was more muted at its U.S. personal-and-commercial banking division.

Last year, CEO Darryl White said his goal was for U.S. operations to account for one-third of the bank's earnings in three to five years. It was a matter of months before the goal was reached.

The Canadian parent of BMO Harris Bank in Chicago has named Johannson group head of North American personal banking, an extension of similar executive duties she holds in the U.S.

CEOs at Bank of Montreal and TD Bank Group say they are unlikely to touch the American cannabis industry until the laws change.

Bank of Montreal is getting about half of its U.S. business from outside the company's Midwest stronghold, thanks to a commercial-banking push, Chief Executive Darryl White said.