Bank of Montreal 1998 Annual Report Download - page 20

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16
BANK OF MONTREAL GROUP OF COMPANIES
and the latter permits direct investment in
Canadian money market instruments that
include treasury bills, bankers’ acceptances,
commercial paper and term deposit receipts.
And we maintained our leading market
share position in the mergers and acquisitions
advisory business and in block trading of
Canadian equities.
TAKING A FEW BOWS
Our stepped-up efforts to create innovative
customer solutions through cutting-edge tech-
nologies earned us an array of honours in 1998
on both the national and international levels.
On the national level, our technology and
line-of-business teams combined to capture
three of the top 10 CIO Canada 1998 Informa-
tion Technology Excellence (ITX) Awards. Our
winners include: mbanx, for its “defining
leadership”inelectronicfinancialservicesin
Canada; NetLending, for putting mortgage,
MasterCard and student line-of-credit applica-
tions and approvals on-line for the first time;
and MERX, an electronic tendering system that
also won us a Distinction Award for investing
strategically in information management and
information technology.
On the international level, NetLending also
earned us a nomination for a Computerworld
Smithsonian Award for the visionary use of
information technology to produce positive
social, economic and education change; our
interactive training CD-ROM, The Quest,took
a best-in-category award from the British
Interactive Multimedia Association; and the
Treasury Knowledge Web, a new site on our
Intranet, was honoured with an International
EMMA Award, which the multimedia industry
describes as its definitive standard of excellence.
And finally, it is worth noting that last
year’s Annual Report won a Silver Award in
the Financial Institutions category of the 1998
Annual Report Awards sponsored by the
Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
and the National Post – whose judges also
honoured us with the Award of Excellence in
Corporate Governance.
FOCUSING ON WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT
We have long acknowledged that, in the end,
the only enduring competitive advantage we
can intelligently hope for lies in the quality and
capability of our employees, and in our ability
to draw out everyone’s personal best.
In 1998, that belief translated into an average
of 7.2 training days per employee and a $63 mil-
lion investment in training. With the long term
firmly in mind, our Institute for Learning also
sowed the seeds of a people management ini-
tiative designed to revolutionize the way we
relate to one another.
Of all the initiatives we undertook to
in
crease shareholder value in 1998, I think it
can safely be said that few are likely to endure
longer or reach farther than the turn we took
toward making ourselves outstanding managers
of people.
F. Anthony Comper (signed)
President & Chief Operating Officer
GROWTH OF A DOLLAR INVESTED IN
BANK OF MONTREAL COMMON SHARES* ($)
5.68
2.01
Bank of Montreal
TSE 300
*Assumes reinvestment of common share dividends.
0
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