"Gimme a Crisis: In the Room With Global Banker Rick Waugh" by Howard Green, a prominent Canadian business journalist,.is not my usual kind of reading fare. But I had a special interest in the subject matter. Let's just say I am very familiar with Scotiabank, where Waugh spent his 40+-year career, as well as the events and many of the people mentioned in this book. ;) So when I heard about it last fall, I immediately added it to my reading list (and finally got around to downloading a copy and opening it).
If you're not interested in a book about risk management, Scotiabank, or Canadian banking generally (or even just banking, period), this might not be book for you. For me, though, it was a bit of a blast from the past!
The central theme of the book is that Rick Waugh, the personable CEO of Scotiabank from 2004 to late 2013, was a master crisis manager. (Author Green points out his father was a fireman -- perhaps a gift for putting out fires, literally and figuratively, ran in the family.) During Waugh's tenure as a top executive and, eventually, CEO, Scotiabank -- long known as Canada's most international bank, with broad global operations, particularly in the Caribbean -- experienced one crisis after another -- most notably in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and the 2008 global financial meltdown (from which Canadian banks emerged relatively unscathed). The book also details other highlights of Waugh's career, including his role in bringing an NBA team (the Raptors) to Toronto, and advancing the careers of women at the bank.
Amusingly, there's a chapter (excerpted in the Toronto Star a few months ago (gift link) -- which is where I first heard about this book) about Waugh's encounter with Donald Trump (!), back in the 1980s when Trump was still just a real estate mogul, looking for financing for his next project, and Waugh ran Scotiabank's New York City office. (The bank did not take Trump on as a client.)
The book was maybe a bit long and a bit repetitive in spots. It occasionally lapses into financial jargon and dizzying explanations of complex financial instruments that made my eyes glaze over. ;) But overall, I thought it was very well-researched, well-written and entertaining, and that it rang true to my own personal experiences and observations about the bank and the man.
4.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded (after some internal debate) down to 4 stars on Goodreads.
This was Book #6 read to date in 2026 (and Book #1 finished in March), bringing me to 15% of my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 1 book behind schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books."
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