Gail Kelly

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This article is about the South African bank executive. For the American anthropologist, see Gail M. Kelly.

Gail Kelly (born Gail Currer on April 25, 1956 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an Australian and South African businessperson. In 2002 she became the first woman CEO of a major Australian bank or top 15 company and, as at 2005, was the highest paid woman at an Australian corporation. She has recently taken up the position of CEO at Westpac.

[edit] Life and Career in South Africa

She was born Gail Currer in South Africa. Currer attended the University of Cape Town where she undertook an arts degree majoring in history and Latin as well as a Diploma of Education. She married Allan Kelly in December 1977. The couple moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where she taught Latin at Falcon College while he served in the Rhodesian army. The couple returned to South Africa where Allan Kelly studied medicine at the University of Witswaterand and Gail Kelly taught at a government high school.

Kelly started work at the Nedcor Bank as a teller but was fast-tracked into an accelerated training program. She started an MBA in 1986 while pregnant with her oldest daughter and graduated with distinction in 1987. In 1990, she became head of human resources at Nedcor after having given birth to triplets five months earlier. The Kellys were becoming disillusioned with South Africa in the middle of the 1990s and were looking to move to a different country. In June 1997, she flew to Sydney where she held interviews with four of the major banks and was appointed to a senior position at the Commonwealth Bank in July 1997.

[edit] Career in Australia

Kelly started work as the General Manager of Strategic Marketing in the Commonwealth Bank in October 1997. By 2002, she was head of the Customer Service Division responsible for running the Commonwealth Bank's extensive branch network. [1]

Her strong performance at the Commonwealth Bank led her to be recruited to St. George Bank in 2002. At the time, St. George was seen as a possible takeover target (especially after the purchase of Colonial State Bank by the Commonwealth Bank) but Kelly has increased the bank's profitability and achieved much higher levels on return on assets. In November 2004, St. George Bank gave Kelly a pay rise and extended her contract indefinitely with the capitalisation of the bank having risen by $3 billion since the start of her term as CEO. The Australian Banking & Finance magazine gave her an award for Best Financial Services Executive in 2003 and 2004.

Due to her success at St George, there was extensive media speculation in June 2005 that she would return to the Commonwealth Bank as CEO on the retirement of David Murray, but Kelly said that she was committed to remaining with St. George. Murray was replaced by Ralph Norris, the former CEO and managing director of Air New Zealand.

On Friday 17 August 2007, she announced her resignation as CEO of St. George Bank to take up the same position in Westpac from 2008. [2]

She started work as Westpac CEO on 1st February 2008.

A Westpac takeover of St. George Bank was announced on May 12th. This is the first time, in Australia, that the CEO of a Bank has led the takeover of another Bank of which they had previously been CEO. It was stated by Sydney Morning Herald that Gail Kelly is on a yearly salary of $18.5 million