Rania Llewellyn, the former CEO for Laurentian Bank, stands for a portrait outside one of their branches in downtown Toronto on Oct. 20, 2020.Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Globe and Mail
It is beyond irony that this year, of all years, one of the most senior and best-known women in Canadian banking is out of a job, with next to no explanation. After a summer full of news stories and interviews about Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Barbie director Greta Gerwig proving women can be business juggernauts, because their concerts and movies grossed gobs of money, a dismal reality is setting in: Such respect is still reserved for only a rarefied few.
On the weekend, Quebec-based Laurentian Bank LB-T abruptly parted ways with chief executive Rania Llewellyn, one of the few women to ever lead a Canadian financial institution. While CEOs are usually given the opportunity to “retire,” providing a grace period that softens the blow publicly, Ms. Llewellyn left without even the semblance of an orderly transition. Her replacement, Éric Provost, is on the record saying he was only told about his new job on Sunday evening, leaving hardly any time to digest it before the news became public.
In fairness to everyone involved, Laurentian Bank is a mess. Ms. Llewellyn was hired from Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T in late 2020 to turn the broken lender around, but it’s been a rough go. Laurentian’s board of directors considered selling the bank this summer, only to find out that, in fact, no one wanted it, and last week the bank suffered through a brutal service outage that prevented clients from accessing their accounts.
But here’s an equally fair question: Does Ms. Llewellyn deserve to be out of a job? Countless male CEOs have dealt with similar blows, if not worse, and they don’t leave like this. If anything, they might stick around, then get heralded for their resilience.
The better question: Did Ms. Llewellyn ever really have a chance? By the time she was hired, Laurentian Bank was losing relevance. It didn’t even have a mobile app until she developed one – in 2021. She hoped to turn the bank around with a three-year strategic plan, but didn’t have a chance to see it through.
Let’s take inspiration from women executives who call it quits to climb the corporate ladder
It is tempting to write it all off as an unfortunate scenario. But Ms. Llewellyn’s experience is not unique. History shows that women who rise to the top often have to walk what is dubbed a glass cliff. Translation: They are more likely to get hired when organizations are in trouble or at risk, and are therefore thrust into a risky and precarious position.
The brutal, but not unfair, way of saying the same thing: Women might only be given the chance to be CEO when the situation is so bad that a man may not want it.
“The way that it repeats itself is so textbook,” says Julie Cafley, executive director of Catalyst Canada, an organization that pushes for inclusive workplaces. And when it doesn’t work out for the female CEO, another woman often isn’t given a chance. “It’s very, very rare that you have two women CEOs back to back,” she said.
The trend isn’t confined to the corporate world. In politics, University of Toronto political scientist Sylvia Bashevkin has called it “imperilled leadership.” Think Kim Campbell in 1993, or more recently, Theresa May in Britain. Ms. Cafley has also studied the same trend with university presidents in Canada, with an emphasis on those who have been ousted. Women are under-represented as university presidents, yet they make up the majority of those who aren’t given the chance to finish their mandates.
It is entirely possible that what transpired for Ms. Llewellyn could have happened to a man. And, yes, there have been other female leaders in Canadian banking. Monique Leroux ran Desjardins Group, and HSBC Bank Canada’s last two heads have been women – Sandra Stuart and Linda Seymour.
But that isn’t a long list, and that matters because the banking sector has a large cultural footprint in Canada, especially since the 2008 global financial crisis when Canada’s banks were held up as some of the best run in the world.
Ms. Cafley at Catalyst also emphasizes something: “When you have so few women at the top, every time one of them leaves, the impact is so outsized.” That is especially true in Canadian banking this year after Laura Dottori-Attanasio left Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T, where she ran Canadian personal and business banking, CIBC’S largest division, to lead Element Fleet Management. Until very recently, she was seen on Bay Street as the most likely candidate to run a Big Six lender.
So when something like Laurentian Bank’s CEO transition happens, all the frustration women have felt for decades can come rushing back. They have tried to climb the corporate ladder for eons in Canada, and yet they still comprise only about 5 per cent of all publicly traded company CEOs here. It is embarrassing for all of us, and it makes a memorable monologue in the Barbie movie all too real.
“It is literally impossible to be a woman,” the character played by America Ferrera says out of frustration. “We have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.”