Gail Kelly (née Currer) (born 25 April 1956) is a South African-born Australian businesswoman. In 2002, she became the first female CEO of a major Australian bank or top 15 company and in 2005 was the highest paid woman in an Australian corporation. She is the former

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

(CEO) of

Westpac Westpac Banking Corporation, known simply as Westpac, is an Australian multinational banking and financial services company headquartered at Westpac Place in Sydney, New South Wales. Established in 1817 as the Bank of New South Wales, it ...

, a role she held from 2008 to 2015. In 2010 Kelly was named 8th most powerful woman in the world by ''Forbes'' and as of 2014, she is listed in 56th place.

Biography

Early life and education

Gail Currer was born in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends ...

, South Africa. Currer attended the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

where she undertook an arts degree majoring in history and Latin as well as a Diploma in Education. She married Allan Kelly in December 1977.

Teacher

The couple moved to

Rhodesia Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...

(now

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

) where she taught Latin at

Falcon College Falcon College (or simply Falcon) is an independent boarding school for boys and girls aged 12–18 in the southern Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe. It was founded in 1954 near Essexvale, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Esigodini, Zim ...

while he served in the

Rhodesian Army The Rhodesian Security Forces were the military forces of the Rhodesian government. The Rhodesian Security Forces consisted of a ground force (the Rhodesian Army), the Rhodesian Air Force, the British South Africa Police, and various personnel ...

. They returned to South Africa where Allan Kelly studied medicine at the

University of the Witswatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...

and Gail Kelly taught at a government high school.

Banking

Kelly started work at the Nedcor Bank in 1980 as a teller but was fast-tracked into an accelerated training program. She started an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

in 1986 while pregnant with her oldest daughter and graduated with distinction in 1987. In 1990, she became head of

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...

at Nedcor (after having given birth to triplets five months earlier). From early 1992 to 1997 she held various other general manager positions at Nedcor, including cards and personal banking. 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 The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, busines ...

in July 1997.

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. Her performance at the Commonwealth Bank led her to be recruited as CEO of St. George Bank (after the death of the incumbent CEO from a heart attack). She commenced in January 2002 – at the time, St. George was seen as a possible takeover target (especially after the purchase of

Colonial State Bank The State Bank of New South Wales, from 1933 until 1981 known as the Rural Bank of New South Wales, was a bank that was owned by the Government of New South Wales. It existed from 1933 until 1994, when it was taken over by the Colonial State B ...

by the Commonwealth Bank) but Kelly increased the bank's

profitability In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs. It i ...

and achieved much higher levels on

return on assets The return on assets (ROA) shows the percentage of how profitable a company's assets are in generating revenue. ROA can be computed as below: :\mathrm = \frac This number tells you what the company can do with what it has, ''i.e.'' how many dolla ...

. 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 ''Australian Banking & Finance Magazine'' is a trade magazine A trade magazine, also called a trade journal or trade paper (colloquially or disparagingly a trade rag), is a magazine or newspaper whose target audience is people who wo ...

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 AO, but Kelly said that she was committed to remaining with St. George. Murray was replaced by

Ralph Norris Sir Ralph Norris, KNZM (born 1949) is an Australasian business leader, knighted for services to New Zealand business in 2009. He transitioned from CIO to CEO, leading business and culture transformations across different industries. Currently t ...

, the former CEO and managing director of

Air New Zealand Air New Zealand Limited () is the flag carrier airline of New Zealand. Based in Auckland, the airline operates scheduled passenger flights to 20 domestic and 30 international destinations in 18 countries, primarily around and within the Pacific ...

. 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. She started work as Westpac CEO on 1 February 2008. On 12 May 2008 Kelly announced an $18.6 billion merger between Westpac and

St. George Bank St.George Bank is an Australian bank with its headquarters in Sydney. Since a 2008 merger, the bank has been part of Westpac, having previously been an independent legal entity. In 2010, St.George was deregistered as a company and ceased to be ...

. The merger was approved by the

Federal Court of Australia The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court of record which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law (with the exception of family law matters), along with some summary (less serious) and indic ...

and finalised on 26 May 2008. The merger resulted in the new combined Westpac Group having 10 million customers, a 25% share of the Australian home loans market and with $108 billion investment funds under its administration. In October 2010, Kelly announced a target to have women occupy 40% of the top 4000 managerial positions at Westpac, a task reported by ''The Australian'' newspaper to have been almost achieved by March 2012. On 13 November 2014, Kelly announced that she would retire as CEO of the Westpac Group on 1 February 2015. Brian Hartzer, the head of Westpac's Australian financial services group, was appointed as her replacement. On 1 August 2017, Kelly released her first book, ''Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership'' (Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House). The book details her experiences of being a high-profile businesswoman and a mother of four.

Ranking

Forbes - Most Powerful Women in the World Fortune - Various Financial Times The Australian Financial Review/Boss Magazine Other Australian Newspapers Other Publications

References

External links

* Crown Content, ''Who's Who in Australia 2005'' North Melbourne Victoria page 1050
''Melbourne Age'' profile of Gail Kelly, 2 July 2005

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050616073812/http://www.finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,15575576-462,00.html ''Weekend Australian'' story about Kelly being a favourite to succeed David Murray at the Commonwealth Bank] {{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Gail 1956 births Living people Australian women in business People from Pretoria South African emigrants to Australia University of Cape Town alumni Westpac people White South African people