onwards, these investment banking subsidiaries, RBC Dominion Securities, BMO Nesbitt Burns, CIBC Wood Gundy, and McLeod Young Weir Ltd., were all rebranded to RBC Capital Markets, BMO Capital Markets, CIBC World Markets, and Scotia Capital, respectively. Nonetheless, their bank holding company parent still use the old names as a brand for their full service brokerage under wealth management, plus the old name still remains the broker dealer subsidiary for their investment bank in Canada. Other large Canadian banks All monetary amounts are in billions C$, updated as of year-ended 2021. Large non-bank financial institutions All monetary amounts are in billions C$, updated as of year-ended 2021. Desjardins Group and ATB Financial are major regional financial institutions. Desjardins, a federation of 313 autonomous credit unions (), is one of the largest financial institutions in Quebec and also operates in some regions of Ontario with substantial Franco-Ontarian populations. ATB Financial (formerly Alberta Treasury Branches) is a Crown corporation owned by the Alberta provincial government that was originally established in 1938 after the province's attempt to impose social credit policies on federally-regulated banks failed. Proposed mergers In 1998, the Bank of Montreal proposed a merger with the Royal Bank of Canada around the same time that CIBC proposed to combine with the Toronto-Dominion Bank. The banks argued that these mergers would enable them to compete globally with other financial institutions. This would have left Canada with only three major national banks. The mergers were reviewed by the Competition Bureau of Canada, which declared that negative effects (such as higher user fees and local branch closures) from the mergers would far outweigh the benefits of allowing the mergers. Ultimately, it was then Finance Minister Paul Martin who rejected both proposed mergers. The issue since has not been revisited by succeeding Finance Ministers; it has been cited as a reason that the Canadian economy easily weathered the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis compared to other nations, and the aforementioned recognition of numerous Canadian banks on the Bloomberg 2011 list of twenty strongest large banks in the world. Potential foreign forays The weakness of the Canadian dollar and high U.S. bank stock prices were commonly cited as obstacles to purchasing assets south of the border. However the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis reversed this trend. In the aftermath of the crisis, the Canadian dollar steadily climbed against the U.S. dollar, achieving parity in early 2008 and trading