Chantal Walker

Chantal Walker was born in the UK but grew up at the tip of Africa. After completing her Bachelor of Business Science, with honors in Marketing and Economics, at the University of Cape Town she spent 3 years traveling through Europe, living predominantly in France, where her soon-to-be husband was playing professional rugby. During this time she worked as a settlement clerk at Nikkei Securities in London, went to the University of Clermont Ferrand to learn to speak French and worked in a travel agency. Upon returning to South Africa she began her marketing career at Ogilvy and Mather where she worked for 4 years as an account manager on various multi-national clients including Smith-Kline Beecham, Nestle, United Tobacco and South African Breweries. After the birth of her first child she lectured Economics and Marketing part-time at Varsity College before immigrating to Canada in 1994.

Since arriving in Canada, Chantal has worked with HSBC in various capacities starting with being the HSBC Account Director at Bryant, Fulton and Shee, in Vancouver for 2 years before joining the HSBC Marketing Department as the Advertising & Promotions Manager for the subsidiary businesses, HSBC Securities, HSBC InvestDirect, HSBC Asset Management and HSBC Trust. Chantal moved to Toronto in 1998 to work solely on the North American discount brokerage businesses of HSBC as the Marketing Director, North America for HSBC InvestDirect. During this time she was instrumental in helping set up the online brokerage business for HSBC both in Canada and the US.

In April of 2000 Chantal's role was expanded to Head of Marketing and Sales for the joint venture between HSBC and Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch HSBC. In this new role she has played a lead role as part of the executive management team to re-launch HSBC InvestDirect Canada Inc. as Merrill Lynch HSBC Canada Inc. and take the business forward in line with both the local and global business objectives.

Chantal's key strengths are her ability to strategically apply her varied marketing knowledge to balance and support both the various business objectives with the client needs. Her abundant energy, passion for the business and innate ability to motivate people allows her to work well with other key areas within the MLHSBC organization and both parent companies, HSBC and Merrill Lynch.

Chantal currently lives in downtown Toronto with her husband Robert, and 3 wonderfully bright and energetic young children Natasha (9), Francesca (6) and Joshua (2). Her personal interests range from traveling and shopping to keeping up with her friends and family around the world.