Can a banker make a difference?
Canadian bank CEOS typically retire, serve on boards for a time, and pursue hobbies that their careers left little time for. That bankers never die, they just lose interest, isn’t entirely a bad joke. Writing a book in retirement is very much the exception.
That exceptionalism makes former BMO CEO Tony Comper’s recent reflections stand out. So does Comper’s degree in English literature, his love of Chaucer, that he seriously considered the priesthood, played bass guitar in a band, fell in love with programming, became a fintech pioneer in his day, and spent 40 years at Bank of Montreal, a career that started formally in 1967 and concluded in 2007 after an eight- year stint as CEO. Comper clearly isn’t an accountant who calculated his way to the CEO’S office. He is a former bank CEO who understands the hard work that is good management, its fundamental tenets, and how one can most enjoy a life’s work.
Thrown into the national spotlight in February 1999 when he was appointed CEO, Comper faced an unenviable task. Canada’s finance minister had rejected the clumsily managed 1998 proposed merger between Canada’s oldest bank — Bank of Montreal — and the country’s largest bank at the time, Royal Bank of Canada. “I had inherited a serious situation with no time to learn the ropes,” Comper writes. “People wanted answers from me on where we would go next. They wanted to know what answers I might have for the future of BMO.”
The existential question Comper had to answer, a question no other BMO CEO had faced before, was: “Can we survive?”
BMO is a storied institution. Founded in 1817, it was once one of the most influential banks in North America, a standard- setter and a critical partner to the federal government from Confederation to the early 1920s. For much of its history, BMO was Canada’s establishment bank. By the time Comper landed in the CEO’S office, however, it had become lost in the shadow of its own grand history.
It turned out Comper had been training his entire life for that moment.
He had distinguished himself early on. In 1970 he was asked to staff BMO’S new computer department. Soon after, he made a momentous decision: he decided to become a techie himself and join the computer department. He was demoted, his pay was cut and he endured the raised eyebrows of peers. Yet it was a decision that put him at the centre of change and the future of banking. In time, he emerged as the go- to manager called on to fix broken departments. His secret? Not just technical but interpersonal skills. Like the best bankers, he excelled at making fast friends.
In February 1999, BMO needed a fixer. Comper’s first fix was making shareholder interests paramount. He got the bank out of lines of business where it was not competitive. He let it be known poor productivity would no longer be accepted as inevitable. And he and his team started driving change in the banking industry itself that would generate efficiencies of scale that had been denied to it by Ottawa’s rejection of the merger with RBC. They found these economies through industry initiatives for back- office processing of cheques, payments (via both credit and debit cards) and securities. This gave rise to organizations such as Moneris, Symcor, and the Canadian Depository for Securities. Both BMO’S share value and dividend increased.
Several chapters in this book will give readers reason for pause. Stepping outside the province of management, Comper delves into the thorny issues of CEO pay and globalization. On CEO pay, it’s not clear who he’s trying to persuade when he argues that the compensation bank CEOS receive is justified. Banks are private businesses. Their shareholders and boards deliberate and vote on compensation packages. Those who argue bank CEOS make too much money will not be interested in a former CEO’S efforts to explain why such generous compensation is justified.
On globalization, Comper misses an opportunity. Since Confederation, Bank of Montreal has had a special place at the Canadian table. Canada thrives best in a global market where barriers to trade are low and Canadian goods and services can compete in the widest marketplaces possible. A Canadian bank CEO is well- positioned to expound on this aspect of Canada’s economic well- being. Yet that view is missing. Comper also ignores the elephant ( or maybe dragon) in the globalization room — China, a country that does not play by the rules of other trading nations, as all Canadians learned when it took hostage two former Canadian diplomats in retaliation for our enforcing international law and arresting a Huawei official in late 2018.
Who should read Comper’s book? Business and management students and anyone with an interest in pulling back the veil, however discreetly, on management at one of Canada’s important institutions. Comper stands out among bank CEOS, and not simply because he wrote a book after he retired.
John Turley- Ewart is a consultant on regulatory risk management and an historian of Canadian banking. Personal
Account: 25 Tales About Leadership, Learning, and Legacy from a Lifetime at Bank of Montreal by Tony Comper with Bruce Dowbiggin was published this week
by ECW Press.