Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ATB FINANC IAL

Guiding Profitable Growth

THE GOVERNMENT of Alberta (Canada) created ATB Financial (then called Alberta Treasury Branches) during the Great Depression to provide funding to farmers during their times of need. Fifty years later (in the 1980s), ATB began to incur losses as low oil prices and a weak agriculture sector triggered a downturn in the Albertan economy; unemployment exceeded 10 percent. Branch expansion and diversification into new services did little to eliminate the loss. ATB realized it needed to operate more like a private sector bank while still remaining under a government-owned framework. The provincial government created a board of directors, with a mandate to develop a strategy that would strengthen ...