The lenders have published reports about the inroads they’re making on hiring and developing diverse talent, yet the efforts in recent decades have yet to yield a woman as a successor
Bharat Masrani, Group President and Chief Executive Officer of TD Bank Group, outside the bank offices in downtown Toronto, on Sept. 3 2020.Canada’s biggest banks are on the brink of a round of CEO shakeups, and the chances that the next group of the country’s most influential Bay Street leaders will include a woman are slim to none.
“When did the banks have their biggest cohort of potential women? It’s probably when I was running retail and wealth at CIBC,” said Sonia Baxendale, CIBC’s former head of retail banking who left in 2011 and is now CEO of the Global Risk Institute. “It feels like we have not made much progress at that point of the pyramid.”Last February, CIBC’s head of personal and business banking Laura Dottori-Attanasio left the bank to take on the CEO job at Element Fleet Management.
Several leadership changes happened in 2023, setting the stage for succession. Since Bank of Nova Scotia stunned Bay Street in 2022 by forgoing internal candidates and embarking on the rare move of tapping a board member as CEO, investors have been keenly watching succession planning. At TD, a high-profile executive departure in December triggered a shakeup in its C-suite. Head of Canadian banking Michael Rhodes – once considered a contender – left for the role of CEO at Illinois-based Discover Financial Services. TD tapped head of wealth Raymond Chun as Mr. Rhodes’s successor and promoted capital markets executive Tim Wiggan to lead the wealth business, placing them in the early stages to eventually be considered for the top job.
“Because of a dwindling of management experience at the executive committee level, there are a couple of banks that have fewer options than others,” Mr. Aiken said. “At TD, given the recent round of changes in the executive committee, there’s nowhere near the same level of experience as there are at some of the other banks. This is what is clouding some of the issues for potential succession once and if Bharat decides to step down.
Representation of women in senior executive positions at U.S. banks is slightly lower, and yet the sector named its first female CEO of a major lender in 2021 with Jane Fraser taking the helm of Citigroup. “If the pipeline isn’t strong enough, it’s not because the women weren’t there. It’s because the organization failed to engage them, failed to mentor them, failed to sponsor them.”
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