A History of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Volume 5 1973–1999

Rod McQueen

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781773056364
• Subtopic: Business History
• Index: Business

How does a venerable institution adapt quickly to sometimes volatile global markets and shifting domestic demands of the late twentieth century?

In A History of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Volume 5 1973–1999, the story of CIBC unfolds amidst a backdrop of world-changing events, economic booms and busts, and memorable moments in Canadian history. This era of the bank saw challenges such as the OPEC crisis and recession-driven collapses of iconic companies like Massey Ferguson, Dome Petroleum, and Olympia & York. CIBC weathered such storms, while also pursuing opportunities in international banking and corporate acquisitions, and embracing technology and education. The lessons of the past shine through in this long-view of how to remain competitive and continue to evolve to meet the needs of millions of clients. All the while, the bank's commitment to its communities is clearly evident in the passionate and generous spirit of CIBC's team members, and its corporate support as one of the leading donors in the nation.

At the heart of all the historical highs and lows are the people of CIBC, here profiled from the executives responsible for the bottom line to those working on the front lines, serving bank clients day in and day out. A History of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce brings to life the strategic changes that have propelled CIBC forward as it creates enduring value for its stakeholders.

1
Taking the Helm

The history of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is a work in constant progress. The bank’s story has previously been told through four volumes beginning in 1867, the same year as Confederation. As the bank spread across Canada, its relevance and relationships grew among consumers and commercial customers alike in many hundreds of communities. This fifth volume begins with the appointment of Page Wadsworth to succeed the autocratic Neil McKinnon, a time when the bank started to become a more open institution with responsibilities shared among senior executives. During the years covered in this volume, 1973 to 1999, other important changes occurred that include the rise of women to occupy executive roles as well as the arrival of technology. Both were seismic events that altered the bank forever and for the better.

Neil J. McKinnon, 1973.

Jeffrey P.R. Wadsworth, 1974.

When McKinnon stepped down in 1973 as chairman of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, continuity of the institution was paramount. The Bank’s board of directors sought to choose the individual who could best lead the bank into the future while maintaining the trust and traditions of the past. The board’s selection of Jeffery Page Rein Wadsworth was as canny as it was obvious, given that he’d been the bank’s second-in-command for the previous two years.

At the same time, the directors designated Russell Harrison as president and chief operating officer. Donald Fullerton replaced Harrison as executive vice-president and chief general manager. In so doing, the board established a team and a succession plan that endured for the next twenty years.

At seventeen, Wadsworth had joined the Port Credit, Ontario, branch of the Standard Bank of Canada in 1928, shortly before it merged with the Commerce.

Wadsworth’s talents were quickly recognized. After gaining experience in the branches and the inspection department at head office, in 1939, he received his first managerial posting at Toronto’s Bloor and Ossington branch. He oversaw a staff of five and had the discretion to make loans up to $1,000, more than enough for a customer to buy a new car.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce, Port Credit, Ontario, 1947.

Banks so tightly controlled employees’ lives that when Wadsworth was told on a Friday in 1950 he was being posted to Calgary, he was instructed not even to tell his wife until Sunday night in case word leaked prior to the announcement on Monday. Although Wadsworth was the equivalent of a regional manager in Calgary, he was called superintendent, a title that did not carry much heft in the U.S. “This archaic title was something of an embarrassment to Wadsworth when he travelled to the United States in furtherance of the bank’s business,” wrote Philip Smith in The Treasure-Seekers: The Men Who Built Home Oil. “One oil man in the Midwest, having studied the business card, asked him politely, but with considerable puzzlement, ‘Do you look after all the bank’s buildings or just head office?’”¹

By the time of the annual meeting in December 1958, Wadsworth was back in Toronto as a vice-president and a member of the bank’s board of directors. He told shareholders that the bank served more than two million customers, had 10,000 employees, and 807 branches including thirty-two branches that had opened during the previous twelve months. But, more important than merely reciting numbers, Wadsworth demonstrated that, unlike McKinnon — who had rarely visited the branches — he was a people person who greatly respected the bank’s employees. At the 1960 annual meeting, he used glowing words to describe his tour that fall of branches in Western Canada. “It was quite evident that in nearly every case even the newest and youngest member of the personnel had quickly become a member of the team and did not regard a position with the bank as ‘just a job,’” he told the shareholders. “The leadership of the senior men and women in the branches is instrumental in infusing this team spirit which will contribute much to our progress in the years to come.”²

Troubled times, however, were just ahead. In a 1963 column in the Toronto Star, Jack McArthur described bankers as “sober, careful, responsible.” Little wonder, given the economic issues McArthur listed, including “the devaluation of the Canadian dollar and the currency crisis which shredded our reserves of U.S. dollars and gold; the switch from a floating exchange rate to a fixed one; and the 1962 austerity program as a last-ditch — and successful — attempt to prevent the international value of the dollar from dropping out of sight.”³

For Wadsworth, there was no room for complacency. “The crisis experienced with respect to our exchange reserves and the foreign exchange value of the Canadian dollar in 1962, together with the immediate reaction to the interest equalization tax proposed by the United States this year, are reminders of the basic sensitivity of the Canadian economy to judgments made and decisions taken in other countries,” he said.⁴ While all banks played an important role in the growth and development of Canadian industry and expertise, Wadsworth continued, “this bank, in particular, provides a worldwide banking service with constantly expanding facilities to Canadians with interests outside Canada, be they exporters, importers, investors, or travellers on business or pleasure.”

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On the local scene, Wadsworth often acted in concert with others just as he did at the office. In 1960, Wadsworth had been invited to join the Toronto Redevelopment Advisory Council, a group of fifteen business leaders who met with the city planning commissioner to offer suggestions about downtown renewal. Among the private sector participants on the committee, the banks were the most active as downtown Toronto was transformed. CIBC expanded its head office to include three new buildings designed by I.M. Pei: Commerce Court South at five floors, Commerce Court East with thirteen floors, and Commerce Court West with fifty-seven floors. Completed in 1973 at 240 metres, Commerce Court West was the tallest building in Canada as well as the largest stainless-steel-clad building in the world. The two other new buildings in the complex were faced with limestone in order to blend with the exterior of the thirty-four- storey Commerce Court North (CCN).

Postcard, 1971. This image was also incorporated into a Lucite commemorative paperweight.

The fountain in the centre of the courtyard was designed to be an employee meeting place.

As part of the expansion, CCN was restored and updated. The edifice features sixteen enormous heads, four on each side at the top of the buttresses, thirty-two storeys or 110 metres above the ground. Each bewhiskered head is twenty-four feet tall; half are depicted smiling and the other half frowning. They stand for courage, observation, foresight, and enterprise; the aspirational characteristics of the bank.

Total construction costs for CCN were $156 million. In 1979, those renovations garnered the bank an Award of Merit from the Toronto Historical Board for the “imaginative and sympathetic treatment of the 1931 Bank of Commerce Building, located in the heart of the city’s financial district.” Among the particular aspects cited were the cleaning and restoration of the blue-and-gold coffered ceiling and the improved lighting of the massive chandeliers in the banking hall.⁵

The other major banks were also building new towers in downtown Toronto. Toronto-Dominion Centre, designed by Mies van der Rohe, comprised six towers that opened from 1967 to 1991. Bank of Montreal’s First Canadian Place was finished in 1975. The two towers of the Royal Bank Plaza were completed in 1976 and 1979, with Scotia Plaza finalized in 1988. Following the 1976 election of René Lévesque and a separatist government in Quebec, senior executives from both the Montreal-based banks, Bank of Montreal and Royal, began moving their executive offices to Toronto. Since the days of the fur trade, Montreal had been the financial centre of Canada. Beginning in the 1960s, that locus shifted to a newly energized, more cosmopolitan Toronto. Page Wadsworth was an integral part of that transition.

Behind these giant sculptures was an open-air observation deck, a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. It closed in the late 1960s.

The bank’s impressive position was built on more than just edifices. In 1961, the Bank of Commerce had merged with Imperial Bank of Canada to create Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the new entity — with $4.2 billion in assets, 1,203 branches in Canada, and nineteen offices abroad — replaced Bank of Montreal as the second biggest of the big five banks.

Beginning in 1963, Wadsworth took on a higher public profile and was more direct and topical in his public speeches than McKinnon had been. A typical discourse delivered by McKinnon was a sixt...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• 1: Taking the Helm
• 2: Brave New World
• 3: Foreign Fields
• 4: Leaving a Legacy
• 5: The French Connection
• 6: Past Imperfect, Future Tense
• 7:Under the Dome
• 8: Changing the Guard
• 9: Full Speed Ahead
• 10: Project Delta
• 11: Choices and Challenges
• 12: The Handshake Deal
• 13: The Sun Never Sets
• 14: Growing with Gundy
• 15: The Glass Ceiling
• 16: The End of the Gods
• 17: School Days
• 18: The Look of a Leader
• 19: Let’s Make a Deal
• 20: Risky Business
• 21: Two into One Won’t Go
• 22: The Future is Now
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Appendices
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright