Bruce Birmingham, left, with bank CEO Peter Godsoe in 2001.
Bruce Birmingham, president of the Bank of Nova Scotia for almost a decade from the mid-1990s on, died July 2 at the age of 68 after complications from ulcerative colitis.
He helped oversee the foreign expansion of the bank in New York, the Caribbean and Asia during a period when it grew from the fourth largest in the country to the second largest, behind the Royal Bank of Canada. He was also involved in the credit and trading part of the bank and was seen as the hard-working quiet partner of the outgoing Peter Godsoe, who was CEO while he was president.
"He effectively operated as chief operating officer and he was involved in all aspects of the bank from risk and trading to our operations around the world," Godsoe said. "There wasn't a major decision made at the bank that he wasn't involved in."
Bruce Robert Birmingham was born in Montreal on Dec. 22, 1941. His grew up in the suburb St. Laurent on the island of Montreal, near where his father worked at Ayerst Pharmaceuticals, now part of Pfizer. Birmingham went to St. Laurent High School, then took a commerce degree at Sir George Williams University, which later merged with Loyola College to become Concordia University. His first job out of university was with the Toronto Dominion Bank. It was there that he met his wife, Betty, who worked at the bank as a teller. Their first child, Jeffrey, born in Montreal, Jeffrey, now also works for the Bank of Nova Scotia.
In his late 20s, Birmingham went back to business school and earned an MBA at the University of British Columbia. He started work at the Bank of Nova Scotia in Vancouver in 1971 and transferred to Toronto the next year. He moved quickly up the ranks, taking over the running of the bank's office in New York.
There he was in charge of everything from currency and bond trading to risk assessment. It was a difficult time, Godsoe recalls, because there was a recession in the United States and a crisis in the real-estate-investment-trust market. There also was a collapse in the value of Manhattan real estate prices in the mid 1970s.
Birmingham returned to Canada in 1976 and four years later was one of the top executives in the bank, as senior vice-president and general manager. He was appointed vice-chairman and named to the board of directors in 1992 and became president in 1995.
Though he was based in Toronto, he travelled the world on behalf of the bank. He was in charge of operations in many parts of the Caribbean, such as Trinidad and Tobago as well as Latin America. Not everything went smoothly on that front. The bank's subsidiary in Argentina failed.
Birmingham also oversaw the bank's expansion in emerging markets in Asia, such as India and Indonesia. During his time as a senior executive the bank expanded its foreign operations from about 20 per cent of its total business to about a third, according to Godsoe.
On the domestic front, Birmingham aided the amalgamation of two trust companies, the National Trust bought from the Jackman family and Montreal Trust acquired from BCE.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had a dramatic effect on the Bank of Nova Scotia and on Birmingham himself. The bank's New York office was next door to the twin towers and its gold reserves were inaccessible for some time. And for Birmingham there was a more personal loss.
"My father went down to New York City in the early days following the attack. One of the employees from the bank had transferred to the World Trade Center and she was killed. He was terribly struck by her death - she was about to be married - and by the devastation in the city where he had worked," said his daughter, Jennifer Birmingham, who was born in the United States when her father worked there.
Outside the office, Birmingham had a wide range of interests. His banking career made him a rich man, and he was generous with both his time and his money. He gave away well over $20-million to hospitals, universities and cultural institutions.
"He gave away so much more money than he ever spent on himself," his daughter said.
For many years he was involved with the Stratford Festival, first as a director then as a donor. He donated $5-million to establish the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training, a program for young actors at Stratford. Hundreds of actors and directors have trained at the school, including Michael Therriault, Sara Topham and Jonathan Goad.
The course runs 17 weeks and the funding from Birmingham and others allows the conservatory to pay the actors equity rates.
Actors typically receive offers to join the festival company following their training.
Birmingham also was on the board of the Oakville Trafalgar Hospital and made donations to it, as well as to the Credit Valley Hospital and the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He donated $2-million to the Sauder School of Business at his alma mater, the University of British Columbia.
One of his favourite charities was wheelchair tennis. His wife, Betty, is an umpire in professional tennis tournaments and she returned from a wheelchair tennis event impressed with the athletes. Her husband was soon involved. The chairs needed for disabled people to play the game are expensive and he paid for many of them. He also established the Birmingham National Wheelchair Championship and was involved in funding the Birmingham Paralympic Games Fund.
In his private life, he was a devoted family man who enjoyed helping his daughter Jennifer in projects at her bed and breakfast in Stratford, Ont.
"He was such a dad. He would help around the garden and even went so far as to help guests inflate their tires when they had a problem," Jennifer said, adding that he never lost his interest in business and that the TV was always tuned to business channels so he could follow the markets.
Birmingham leaves his wife Betty and his children, Jennifer and Jeffrey.
Special to The Globe and Mail