In 1982, William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb founded TradePlus in Palo Alto, California. In 1991, Porter founded a new company, E-Trade Securities, Inc.,[4] with several hundred thousand dollars of startup capital from TradePlus. E-Trade offered its trading services via America Online and Compuserve. In 1994, its revenues neared $11 million (up from $850,000 in 1992). It later reorganized and emerged under the name E-Trade Group, with E-Trade Securities as its principal subsidiary.[5] In August 1996, it went public with Robertson, Stephens & Company as the lead underwriter. In 2003, the company changed its name from E-Trade Group Inc. to E-Trade Financial Corporation. In 2001, an online brokerage firm known as Web Street Securities was assumed by E-Trade. Web Street had a strong presence in cities throughout the United States with offices in Beverly Hills, Boston, Denver and San Francisco. The sale was heard to be around $50 million in stock. In 2003, the Toronto-Dominion Bank held talks to merge its TD Waterhouse discount brokerage with E-Trade, but the two sides could not come to an agreement over control of the merged entity.[6][7] In 2005, E-Trade made an unsolicited offer for Ameritrade, currently the second largest US discount broker. Ameritrade instead purchased TD Waterhouse, with TD Bank holding a 39% stake in the new entity.[8] In August 2005, E-Trade Financial acquired Harrisdirect, formerly a discount brokerage service of Bank of Montreal. Two months later, E-Trade acquired Brown & Company (aka BrownCo), formerly a discount brokerage service of J.P. Morgan for $1.6 billion in cash.[9] E-Trade previously operated in 13 nations, however they revoked the brand name license from what was formerly known as SBI E-Trade Securities in Japan, following a disagreement with E-Trade's United States headquarters over SBI pursuing unauthorized international expansion outside of Japan. Thus, the E-Trade brand has disappeared from Japan.