Toronto, ON, Canada - December 5, 2013, Toronto, ON, Canada - Royal Bank of Canada’s president and chief executive officer, Gordon Nixon, announced his intention to retire effective August 1, 2014, after 13 years in this role.
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Gordon Nixon is president and chief executive officer of RBC, the brand name for Royal Bank of Canada and its subsidiaries. He is also a director of Royal Bank of Canada and chairman of RBC's Group Executive.
Mr. Nixon began his career in 1979 at Dominion Securities in Toronto where he worked in Global Markets and subsequently the Investment Banking division. In 1986, he transferred to Tokyo to assume responsibility for the firm's operations in Japan. Dominion Securities was acquired by Royal Bank of Canada in 1987 and Mr. Nixon returned to Toronto in 1989 as a managing director of Investment Banking.
In 1995, Mr. Nixon was appointed head of Global Investment Banking and in 1999 became chief executive officer of RBC Capital Markets and a member of Royal Bank's Executive Committee. He was appointed president of Royal Bank of Canada on April 1, 2001 and chief executive officer on August 1, 2001.
Mr. Nixon is past chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and chairs the Ontario Premier's Jobs and Prosperity Council and the Queen's University Capital Campaign. He has been awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario.
He is a recipient of Canada's Outstanding CEO of the Year Award, the Canadian Business Leader Award, has twice been included on Barron's list of the World's Best CEO's, and is on Bloomberg's list of the World's 50 Most Influential People.
Mr. Nixon is an Honouree of the Public Policy Forum and is a recipient of the CIJA/UJA Words and Deeds Leadership Award, the Rotary Foundation's Paul Harris Fellowship, the Queen's Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee Medals, a Learning Partnership Champion of Public Education Tribute and an American Banker Innovator of the Year Award.
Mr. Nixon attended Queen's University where he received an Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree and has an Honourary Doctor of Laws from both Queen's University and Dalhousie University.
The Board of Directors announced that Dave McKay, Group Head, Personal & Commercial Banking will be appointed as President at the Annual Meeting on February 26, 2014, and President and Chief Executive Officer effective August 1, 2014.
Mr. McKay's previous role was Group Head, Canadian Banking, where he was responsible for RBC's domestic retail bank - the personal and commercial retail business including Consumer and Commercial Lending, Home Equity, Deposits, Branch Investments and Online Investing in Canada.
Mr. McKay held this role from 2008 to November 2012, prior to which he was Executive Vice President of Personal Financial Services and Senior Vice President of Financing Products respectively.
Mr. McKay has spent 25 years with RBC in many different areas including executive management of retail and commercial banking, retail banking field roles, commercial account management, group risk management and corporate banking in Canada and Japan.
Most recently, Mr. McKay was recognized as the global "Retail Banker of the Year" by Retail Banker International in their prestigious annual awards.
Mr. McKay holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. He is the Vice Chair, Board of Governors for the University of Waterloo.
RBC also announced that Mark Standish, Co-Group Head, Capital Markets and Investor & Treasury Services will be leaving RBC next year. In the interim he will work with RBC’s trading businesses to facilitate transition under the changing regulatory regime in the United States.
Mr. Standish's tenure with RBC began in 1995 as head of proprietary and structured trading within the Global Equity Derivatives group of RBC Dominion Securities. From 1993 until 1995, Mr. Standish was a managing director at Kidder Peabody & Company. Preceding Kidder Peabody, Mr. Standish was with Lehman Brothers in New York responsible for equity derivatives, commodity derivatives and commodity financing.
During the 1980's, he was with Bankers Trust in London involved with fixed income derivatives and proprietary arbitrage trading. He started his career in retail banking with National Westminster Bank in 1977. He studied banking and finance at Croydon College in England, being an Associate member, Chartered Institute of Bankers (1983).
Doug McGregor, currently Co-Group Head, Capital Markets and Investor & Treasury Services, will assume full responsibility for the businesses as Chair and CEO of RBC Capital Markets and Group Head, Capital Markets and Investor & Treasury Services (I&TS), effective immediately.
Mr. McGregor began his career in corporate finance and then institutional equity sales at Pitfield Mackay Ross Ltd in 1979. In 1983 he became a real estate investment banker with Marcil Trust which was later acquired by RBC Capital Markets in 1990. ■