Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: #44, Katie Taylor
Our annual ranking of the people whose smarts, connections and clout are changing the city as we know it
Katie Taylor
RBC
44 Taylor, the most powerful chair in Canadian banking, sits atop the biggest of the Big Five banks by total market value. With $34 billion in revenue and 79,000 employees, it’s also one of the country’s largest companies. RBC posted record earnings of $9 billion in 2014, Taylor’s first full year as chair, and has since defied analyst expectations with regular quarterly profits of about $2.5 billion. As Canada’s first female bank chair, she’s a spokesperson for workplace diversity: she championed the Ontario Securities Commission’s “comply or explain” rules and helped launch the Canadian chapter of the 30% Club, a corporate gender-balance initiative, then convinced bank CEOs, newspaper publishers and other Bay Street big shots—including CIBC’s Victor Dodig, Torstar’s John Honderich and RBC’s David McKay—to sign on.
Side Gigs:
Taylor is chair of the SickKids Foundation, and a director of the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and Swiss HR company Adecco Group.
