Dain Rauscher Inc. history

1869 Bank is incorporated as Merchants' Bank of Halifax.

Then from 1873 to the end of the decade, a business depression hit Nova Scotia's shipbuilding industry hard and kept the bank's growth slow.

Although this branch closed in 1889, the bank remained committed to international operations, opening several branches in Latin America before it was well established in western Canada.

By 1896, Merchants' Bank's assets totaled CAD 10 million.

In 1899 two more branches were established in New York and Havana.

With this growth, the bank decided in 1907 to relocate from Halifax to Montreal, where the general manager was based.

Dain Rauscher's roots reach back to 1909, when Oscar Kalman started a small brokerage shop in St Paul, Minnesota.

1910 Union Bank of Halifax is acquired.

1912 The Royal acquires the Traders Bank of Canada.

It was followed in 1916 by a Denver, Colorado, venture named Bosworth, Chanute, Loughridge & Co.

1917 The Quebec Bank is purchased.

In fact, a surging industrial base generated huge markets for stocks and bonds, particularly during the 1920s.

J.M. Dain had moved to Minneapolis in 1922 to represent a Chicago investment firm.

1925 Union Bank of Canada is acquired.

However, J.M. Dain started the enterprise that would later be credited with engineering the amalgamation of a brokerage network in the western United States in 1929, shortly before the infamous stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.

1941 The Royal becomes Canada's largest bank by assets.

The bank continued its international expansion with the establishment of the Royal Bank of Canada Trust Company in New York in 1951 as well.

In 1962, almost 100 years after its founding, The Royal Bank of Canada adopted a new emblem to replace its original coat of arms.

To that end, J.M. Dain & Co. merged with Kalman & Co. in 1967.

1968: Rauscher, Pierce & Co. merges with Phoenix bond house Refsnes, Ely, Beck & Co.

By the close of 1972, Dain had become a public company through the sale of 250,000 shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

1973: Inter-Regional is created as a holding company for Dain, Kalman & Quail and Bosworth, Sullivan & Co. of Denver.

The two firms would operate as separate entities until 1979, when they were fused into Dain Bosworth Incorporated.

In 1981, RPR and IFG executives met to explore working arrangements.

In early 1982, an agreement was formalized.

IFG managed to obscure problems with its leasing division until 1983, when the dilemma began to climax and IFG decided to shutter the subsidiary.

He was moved to the top slot in 1985 by a board of directors that was eager for a turnaround.

In 1986 Allan Taylor became chairman and CEO of Royal Bank.

The Royal began negotiations with Wood Gundy, a leading Canadian brokerage firm, in the spring of 1987, some months before the law actually changed.

In 1988, Dain acquired The Milwaukee Company along with its 12 Wisconsin and Illinois offices.

1990 Bank shortens its name to Royal Bank of Canada.

Royal Bank was the second largest bank in North America by 1991 and was seeking to defend its strong position, and further raise its profile in the United States, by acquiring a United States retail bank.

In 1993, in fact, the company started to expand again.

1994: Dain Bosworth acquires Clayton Brown Holding Company, a Chicago-based bond house; merges operations into Dain Bosworth and Rauscher Pierce Refsnes.

By late 1995, IFG was the tenth-largest full-service regional brokerage house in the nation and the leading broker in its region.

Meanwhile, in November 1996 RBC Dominion Securities added to its already strong portfolio the operations of Richardson Greenshields Limited, acquired for CAD 480 million.

1997: Inter-Regional changes name to Interra Financial.

Under the reorganization, subsidiaries Dain Bosworth and Rauscher Pierce Refsnes combined in January 1998 to create a single, more powerful brand name and one of the largest securities firms west of the Mississippi River.

The bank spent $1.23 billion early in the year for Dain Rauscher Corporation, a regional, midsized brokerage firm based in Minneapolis that generated approximately $930 million in revenue in 1999.

In February 2000, Dain Rauscher announced that it would also roll out a new large venture capital fund.

In 2001, our company, operating under the name Dain Rauscher, was acquired by the Royal Bank of Canada.

During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004 RBC recorded charges of CAD 322 million to write down the value of the mortgage unit and to eliminate nearly 1,700 jobs from the RBC head office.