Top CEO

Gordon Nixon • Born, Jan. 25, 1957, Montreal • Chief executive officer, Royal Bank of Canada (TSX: RY)
Years at company: 21 • Age: 51

1979 Graduates Queen’s University with a degree in commerce.
1986 Heads up Tokyo office of Dominion Securities at the height of the Japanese boom.
1999 Named chief executive officer, RBC Capital Markets, at age 42.
2001 Replaces John Cleghorn as chief executive officer, Royal Bank of Canada.
2004 Initiates corporate restructuring. Reduces head count and introduces major new management process.
2007 Earns $8,767,229 in compensation and bonus. Realizes gain of $29,033,072 on exercised stock options. Awarded Order of Ontario.

Next challenge: Weather the upcoming recession and, after seven years at Royal's helm, turn his mind to his succession.

On Bay Street one recent afternoon, the sense of dislocation and unease is palpable. Throughout the morning, the Dow has plunged several hundred points. The global financial crisis that collapsed Wall Street continues to hammer markets, and an electronic sign hanging off of one of Canada’s battered banks tallies the damage in real-time: another dozen points — and millions of dollars — are gone in just minutes.

Yes, these are scary times for investors — or for that matter, anyone relying on the financial system (which, is all of us, really). But at 200 Bay St., headquarters of the nation’s largest financial institution, Royal Bank of Canada, the mood isn’t as despondent as you might think. A steady stream of serious-looking people shuffle in and out of the building. But, hey, at least they’re walking, not jumping. And up on the eighth floor of the south tower, the executive suite is a veritable oasis of serenity and calm. “I wouldn’t overplay the stress on the CEO,” says Gord Nixon, RBC’s chief executive, seated in his spacious office, discussing the world financial crisis as if it were just another day on the job. “The stress I face is the same as a lot of other people down through the organization.”

Nixon, this year’s All-Star CEO, along with Royal’s head of communications, is sitting down for a chat around a low coffee table, a light-blue couch and two chairs near the window of his office. If you thought he’d be running his hand nervously through his hair, or rapidly tapping his foot as he spoke, you’d be wrong. His deportment is studied, mannered, measured. Obama-cool. Patrician. Which is remarkable. This is the guy, after all, who is running a banking giant during the worst financial meltdown of a generation. Every last ounce of volatility, chaos and change sparking through the markets is, at some level, channelling through this office, as Nixon and his lieutenants make enterprise-wide decisions about how to pick their way through the mess.

You can safely bet the adrenalin levels have, at times, been intense. But whether it’s Nixon’s breeding, education or experience, there is little outward indication — today anyway — that the world financial system is flirting with destruction. Only when he’s pressed does Nixon open up and describe what it’s been like to head a multibillion-dollar financial institution steering its way through the biggest disaster since the Great Depression. “There is no question it has been more stressful over the last 18 months than during a normalized period,” he says calmly. “This has truly been the most challenging crisis for the financial industry during the postwar period. We’ve been through periods of more severe economic turmoil, whether it’s recession, deflation, stagflation. And we’ve been through difficult real-estate markets. But there has never been a period where the financial system itself has been in such a state of crisis and dysfunctionality.”

What stands out for Nixon is the speed at which events have unfolded. “There’s been a major restructuring in the industry almost every week for the last couple of months,” he says. “Every day there’s been a new crisis, new news in the marketplace that has had a big impact on the financial system. I would say that one of the most unique things about this period is that it has been so unrelenting.”

Unrelenting, indeed. But not “out of control” or “too much too handle.” Those are words you just won’t hear coming from Nixon. It’s been tough, sure — but manageable, nonetheless.

That is precisely the kind of attitude shareholders want in a person running a bank in difficult times. CEOs who panic at the sight of red ink aren’t going to get anyone through a serious downtown, let alone a Depression, which, incidentally, the Royal Bank has already survived. No, they want someone at the helm who is fully prepared when the bad stuff happens, who can deal with the fallout without losing his head or getting ruffled.

Gord Nixon is that man.

Gordon Nixon was born in Montreal in 1957 to Melbourne Nixon, a partner in an engineering firm, and his wife Elizabeth, a homemaker. He was raised in the city’s tony Mount Royal and Westmount neighbourhoods and schooled at prestigious Lower Canada College. After graduating from high school, Nixon was shipped off to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., where he took a degree in commerce and played a bit of rugby.

For a modest country like Canada, it was a decidedly blue-blooded upbringing. And so it wasn’t a surprise to see Nixon move on to a job as an investment banker at Dominion Securities (DS), the storied Canadian investment bank that financed much of the country’s industrialization in the years before the First World War. Nixon made the most of his time at DS, and rose steadily through the ranks, managing its offices in Japan at the height of that country’s economic boom in the late 1980s. He eventually returned to Canada and was appointed managing director of investment banking — even though big and stodgy Royal Bank had bought a majority stake in DS in 1987.