Dive Brief:

• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CEO Victor Dodig will retire Oct. 31, the bank announced Thursday.
• Harry Culham, the bank’s head of capital markets, asset management and enterprise strategy, will become CIBC’s chief operating officer, effective April 1, and succeed Dodig as CEO on Nov. 1, the bank said.
• Dodig will serve as a special adviser to Culham and CIBC’s board from November until April 2026. His departure will leave Royal Bank of Canada’s Dave McKay as the longest-serving CEO at a Big Six Canadian bank. Dodig ascended to the top role in September 2014; McKay began leading RBC a month earlier.

Dive Insight:

Thursday’s announcement caps the rise of Culham, who began at CIBC as a Vancouver-based intern in foreign exchange in 1989. He left CIBC at one point and rejoined in 2008, serving in Europe- and Asia-based roles before being named to lead the bank’s capital-markets operation in 2015.

Culham was seen as one of three candidates vying to succeed Dodig. The other two – U.S. CEO Shawn Beber and Hratch Panossian, who leads CIBC’s Canadian retail banking – are expected to stay at the bank, according to The Globe and Mail.

CIBC may have indicated Culham’s front-runner status last year, when the bank added asset management and strategy responsibilities to his title. Culham also became head of CIBC’s Caribbean division.

“Harry’s approach to creating shareholder value through disciplined execution, prudent and risk-controlled growth, and a focus on clients are ideally suited to furthering CIBC’s momentum,” Kate Stevenson, the bank’s board chair, said in a statement Thursday.

Among the most pressing challenges for CIBC’s near term are geopolitical tensions between Canada and the U.S. The bank generates about 20% of its profit in the U.S. – up from less than 2% when Dodig began as CEO, according to Bloomberg.

"People don't quite know how to plan," CIBC CFO Robert Sedran said last week, referencing clients and the potential threat of tariffs.

"Nobody's making plans for two, three, four weeks,” Sedran said, according to American Banker. “It's a difficult environment in which they are trying to do that."

In terms of strategy, Culham emphasized “connectivity across the bank.”

“It’s a strategy around helping clients achieve their ambitions, and when you look out five or 10 years, the strategy won’t be a whole lot different,” Culham told The Globe and Mail.

Dodig on Thursday said “the time is right to hand the baton to Harry.”

Dodig noted that he will turn 60 this year – a factor in the timing of his decision, he said.

“At a personal level, by the end of this, it’ll be more than 11 years,” he told Bloomberg. “When you’re in the seat here as captain for over a decade, you don’t cling on to the role.

“We’re really coming into our own in terms of what’s been achieved,” Dodig added.

Under Dodig, CIBC – Canada’s fifth-largest bank – boosted its presence in U.S. commercial banking and wealth management with a $3.8 billion acquisition of Chicago-based PrivateBancorp in 2016.

The bank expanded its services to the masses, too – launching the Simplii Financial digital-banking platform in 2017 and acquiring Costco’s Canadian credit-card business in 2021.

Though CIBC’s stock saw stumbles in 2023 over exposure to U.S. commercial real estate loans, the bank’s share price jumped more than 50% in the 12 months preceding January, according to Bloomberg. Shares have dropped 12% since.

Like Culham, Dodig had early-career experience with CIBC. While a student in 1985, Dodig worked at the bank as a teller in Toronto. Before returning to CIBC for good, Dodig worked as a management consultant for McKinsey, and served in managing director roles at Merrill Lynch and UBS, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Analysts at both RBC and Jefferies expressed surprise at the timing of CIBC’s leadership transition.

Jefferies analyst John Aiken wrote he thought Dodig would “stay in the role for a couple of more years in order to see his strategy through. 

“We see little risk in the transfer of control," Aiken wrote, calling Culham “an excellent fit."

Dodig’s transition will be the second CEO changeover among Big Six Canadian banks this year. Raymond Chun became CEO at TD in February, when his predecessor Bharat Masrani’s departure was accelerated after the bank took more than $3 billion in penalties last year as regulators found anti-money laundering deficiencies. TD also agreed to an asset cap of $434 billion on its U.S. retail operations.

Dodig received C$13.1 million ($9.1 million) in 2024, representing a 22.4% compensation bump over the previous year, CIBC disclosed last week. He’ll retire from CIBC with a holding in the bank valued at C$50.7 million, according to The Globe and Mail.

CIBC, by comparison, paid Culham C$10.3 million last year, up from C$8.4 million in 2023.