Gail Kelly

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Gail Kelly , née Currer , (born April 25, 1956 in Pretoria , South Africa ) is an Australian manager. From 2008 to 2015 she headed Westpac , one of Australia's leading banks. The Forbes magazine counted Kelly at this time of the hundred most powerful women in the world .

Live and act

Childhood and education in South Africa

Gail Kelly was born on April 25, 1956 in the capital of South Africa, the daughter of a real estate agent. Her parents were of English origin. Kelly attended an Anglican nun-run school where English was spoken and taught. She then studied Latin and Modern History at the University of Cape Town . There she met Allan Kelly in 1974, who was studying social work . They married in December 1977 after they had both successfully completed their studies. Kelly earned a Bachelor of Arts and a teaching degree . The couple then moved to Rhodesia .

Professional beginnings in Rhodesia and South Africa

Kelly took up a position as a Latin teacher at Falcon College, a private school near Esigodini . Her husband was drafted into the Rhodesian army and defended the white minority government of Ian Smith against guerrillas . In 1978 his military service ended. They moved back to South Africa, where he continued his education in Johannesburg at the medical school of the Witwatersrand University . Kelly taught history in a public school but was unhappy with her profession.

Kelly's father found her a job at the South African bank Nedcor , which she started on January 14, 1980. Kelly was initially employed there as a cashier , but was then accepted into a training program and quickly rose. In 1986 she took a year off and earned an MBA with honors from Witwatersrand University while pregnant with her first child. In January of the following year she returned to her job and experienced a change in the South African banking system, in which, following deregulation and expansion of the money market in the 1980s, new areas of activity such as personal loans and credit risk management increasingly developed. On November 11, 1989, Kelly became a mother of triplets and was on leave for five months. She then took up a position as Head of Human Resources at Nedcor. Her husband worked in the pediatric department of an HIV clinic. Faced with the downsides of growing up children in South Africa, he increasingly pushed for people to leave the country.

Career in Australia

Kelly moved to Sydney with her family in October 1997 . There she became General Manager of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and headed the Strategic Marketing division. She and her family soon acquired Australian citizenship. On January 14, 2002, Kelly moved to St. George Bank and became its CEO a month later . She became the first woman to run an Australian bank and one of the 15 most important public companies in the country. In 2004 she was the highest paid Australian with an annual salary of $ 1.5 million plus a performance bonus of the same amount . In May 2007, Charles Sturt University awarded Kelly an honorary doctorate for her services in finance .

On February 1, 2008, Kelly became CEO of Westpac . Three months later, Westpac took over St. George Bank, making it the largest bank in Australia. In the same year, Kelly was listed by Forbes as the 11th Most Powerful Women in the World. Since then, she has appeared on the list of the 100 most powerful women every year until 2014, her highest rating was 8th in 2010. Forbes justified its decision with the fact that Kelly is the most influential Australian business woman and that every expression of her is publicized in the media within a very short time made. For example, since the end of 2009 she has drawn the ire of many Australians by drastically increasing loan rates. She justified this with low savings rates in Australia, which made financing more expensive for banks. She wanted to encourage Australians to save more.

On February 1, 2015, Kelly left Westpac, whose market value had more than doubled during her tenure. From 2015 to 2019 she worked as a non-executive director for the South African retail company Woolworths Holdings Limited. She has held the same position for Singapore Telecommunications since December 2018 . She advises other companies and is a member of the Group of Thirty .

In 2017 Kelly published the autobiographical book Live Lead Learn .

Publications

  • Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership. Penguin Books Australia, Hawthorn 2017, ISBN 978-0-670-07939-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Biography The Age, Retrieved June 15, 2012
  2. ↑ CSU honors St George Bank CEO Gail Kelly, Charles Sturt University website ( Memento from April 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Westpac Executive Team website, accessed June 15, 2012
  4. ↑ Westpac takes over St. George. The largest bank Down Under Süddeutsche, accessed June 15, 2012
  5. ↑ # 11, Gail Kelly forbes com, Retrieved June 15, 2012
  6. ^ Gail Kelly in Forbes list of world's 10 most powerful women The Australian, Retrieved June 15, 2012
  7. ^ Gail Kelly to retire and Brian Hartzer to become Westpac Group CEO. westpac.com.au. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  8. ^ Robert Laing: Woolworths loses two directors. businesslive.co.za. February 11, 2019. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  9. ↑ Board of Directors singtel.com. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  10. ↑ Current Member Biography. Gail Kelly group30.org. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Kelly, Gail
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Currer, Gail (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Pretoria , South Africa