Commerce
Bancorp said Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is
investigating insider dealings at the company in a reprise of a probe by
federal bank regulators that led to the ouster in June of founder Vernon W.
Hill II. TD Bank Financial, which agreed to buy the Cherry Hill, N.J., bank
for $8.5 billion, said in a statement that it knew of the pending
investigation before announcing the deal on Oct. 2. Hill's special deals, such
as a contract with his wife's design firm, prompted the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency to open an investigation earlier in the year.
Hill, who founded the bank, oversaw its expansion from a South Jersey
institution into a mid-Atlantic chain with 450 branches stretching from New
York to Washington with an outpost in Palm Beach County, Fla. — Matthew
Wurtzel
See
story from The Philadelphia Inquirer
See
Oct. 2 story from TheDeal.com
See
Hill story from Dealscape
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