What will it take for Scotia to stop bankrolling Israel’s genocide?

For over two years, people across the country have been gathering at Scotiabank branches to protest the bank’s massive stake in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.

Artists and culture workers have mobilized to boycott and reject Scotiabank funding in the arts and, in doing so, damaged Scotiabank’s reputation and weakened their hold on the cultural sector as an arena for corporate publicity.

Hundreds of customers have closed their accounts, pulling their business and savings from Scotiabank.

And, for over two years, Canadians have been witnessing mass death in Palestine - writing letters, making phone calls and taking to the streets to demand an end to Scotiabank’s complicity in genocide.

Meanwhile, David Fingold, the Senior Portfolio Manager for Scotiabank's 1832 Asset Management, has gotten away with hiding his ideological commitments to Zionism -- and his outsized investments in Elbit Systems and other Israeli stocks -- behind a big bank. This has resulted in an Elbit stake that remains many times larger than its nearest Canadian competitors

Scotiabank's latest quarterly report from November 2025 reveals that the bank recently sold a portion of its shares in Elbit, with its holdings now valued at around $84 million. This happened just as Elbit stock hit its all-time peak value. In other words, this divestment, rather than being a definitive statement against war profiteering, was actually a hugely profitable move for Scotiabank.

Elbit’s surge followed the securing major arms contracts including two deals in November 2025: a $210 million deal with the Israeli Ministry of Defense for upgrading Merkava tanks, and a secretive $2.3 billion deal for "strategic defense" weapons systems with an undisclosed international client, over eight years. These deals are part of Israel's strategy to finance its own ongoing genocide and colonization of Palestine through selling weapons to other countries.

In the last year, in the face of a string of layoffs, company restructuring, and "strategic exits" from its operations in a number of other countries, Scotiabank has taken a turn from being the "arts bank", or "woke bank", to now rebranding itself as a stable "port in the storm" instead. Fingold and other Scotiabank executives see its Elbit investments as being consistent with this pivot: rational, stable, profitable.

In the past, public pressure has had a hand in both forcing Scotiabank to divest stock, and denting Elbit's overall stock price. But as the political situation changes, we can't rely on the same tactics to produce the same results.

Scotiabank's bottom line has become beholden to the whims of David Fingold and a handful of other influential, activist investors. This proves that it is not, in fact, the safe bet that it purports to be. As we look ahead to 2026, our campaign will be testing new means to challenge Elbit's public reputation and financial viability and force Scotiabank to divest from Elbit Systems, as we have before -- and will again.