Rudy Sankovic, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at TD Bank Group, spent the first seven years of his childhood in Red Lake, Ontario, a gold-mining town where his parents moved after emigrating from Yugoslavia. From there he moved to Toronto, and whether the motivation was getting a commerce degree from the University of Toronto or working as a chartered accountant at Deloitte & Touche. Toronto has been his home ever since.

Prior to joining TD in 2004, Sankovic ventured into the investment world at Merrill Lynch and then served as Senior Vice President and CFO of the personal and commercial banking division of Royal Bank of Canada. He then moved to TD Wealth Management, where CFO Colleen Johnson recommended IR as a future career path.

Sankovic, who has headed an IR team of eight for the past three years, was initially apprehensive: “As an IRO, you’re more externally focused, dealing with our investors and analysts.” And yet he quickly found that his finance expertise was excellent preparation for communicating with this audience. “Our stakeholders are very numerate. Numbers are their life,” he says. “So if you can talk to them on the same level, you become a more effective IR person.” 

Legendary Service, an IR Mantra

With 2,500 branches in Canada and the U.S., TD has a retail mantra: to deliver legendary customer service. Sankovic tailored that same aspiration to the bank’s IR brand, and aims “to deliver legendary customer service to our analysts and investor customers.” Practically speaking, this means promptly responding to all inquiries and adding value by hosting investor days and other shareholder events.

One way TD distinguishes itself, says Sankovic, is by the commitment of Johnson and CEO Ed Clark to IR. This commitment, he says, has secured the bank formal recognition at the IR Magazine Awards – Canada for the past four years.

When Sankovic took the IR helm, he was a newcomer to the discipline and so learned on the job. He immediately began studying TD’s financial reports and its budgeting process, as well as meeting with various executives within the organization who could deepen his understanding of various aspects of the business.

Sankovic estimates that he spends 20% of his time on the fixed-income investing community, and he has found that these investors are a different breed from their equity counterparts. “Fixed-income investors are more interested in how sound your balance sheet is – so there’s a little bit of a tilt to your storytelling,” he says. “Fixed-income investors want to know what could blow up on you.”

Sankovic is also experimenting with going on IR trips solo. “In order to relieve management of having to constantly be on the road, we’re trying to do more IR-only trips, where someone like myself would go to Europe or to locations in the U.S. so that management doesn’t have to.” Last year he travelled to Asia and Europe without the CEO and CFO and the reception was warm.

CIRI and Beyond

Sankovic joined CIRI three years ago, and his involvement has grown over time. He is currently running for a seat on the National Board and is Co-Chairing CIRI’s Annual Conference in June, along with Anne Plasterer (See Introducing, IR leader Volume 24 Issue 2). “I’m trying to expand my IR network,” he says. “And I think CIRI is a great avenue for building contacts in the IR world across Canada.”

Outside of work, Sankovic has a passion for golf and for deep-sea fishing. Earlier this year he took up curling “as a way to keep active in winter.”

With three children ages 17, 22, and 34, Sankovic and his wife are facing an empty nest. Sankovic hopes that the next years will afford opportunities to travel for pleasure. The couple is considering a trip to London this summer, but will then research other European destinations for what he deems “the travel phase of our life together.”