Gail Kelly might not be a household name in SA, but chances are that if she had remained here rather than moving to Australia, she, instead of Tom Boardman, would be heading Nedbank.
Since quitting Nedbank in 1997 as the head of its retail products division, Kelly has became something of a corporate sensation in her adopted country.
Fortune's global list of the 50 most-powerful women in business now ranks Kelly as number 28, (Maria Ramos comes in at 14) crediting her for transforming a "sleepy mortgage lender into Australia's fifth-largest bank".
Initially Kelly headed the Commonwealth Bank's customer service division but in 2002 she was recruited as CEO of the fifth-largest bank, St George - then a lazy takeover target.
Despite the fact that she was the first female CEO of an Australian bank, the Melbourne Age reported that on the day of her appointment, St George's market capitalisation soared by A$97m.
Having presided over market share gains and a A$3bn jump in St George's value, she soon become the highest-paid woman in the country, before quitting the bank in August.
Now, Kelly is on "gardening leave" as she waits to take up the position of CEO at Australia's fourth-largest bank, Westpac, in February. (Kelly's minders-to-be at Westpac are furiously protective and it proved impossible for the FM to speak to her before going to print.)
Born in Pretoria in 1956, Kelly could never have predicted her sparkling career. S he graduated from the University of Cape Town with an arts degree in Latin and history - unlikely training for a bank CEO.
After marrying Allan Kelly and completing a teaching stint in Zimbabwe, Kelly found herself at Nedbank, where she began at the bottom as a teller. By 1986, she'd nailed her MBA and was spotted by the powers-that-were. (Somehow along the way she had triplets.)
Derek Muller, a former Nedbank director who was once considered in line for the CEO position after Richard Laubscher resigned in 2003, says Kelly was "definitely CEO material".
"She was extremely highly thought of across the bank. Richard [Laubscher] saw a lot of potential in her, so he gave her the credit card business to run, which at the time wasn't a high-performing operation. But within a few years, she had really turned it around."
Of the many who worked with Kelly, not one had a bad word to say about her. "She works too hard," offers one Nedbank staffer, but the closest you'll find to criticism is her name on an Australian list of "worst-dressed executives".
How big a loss is this to SA?
Rodney Kaplan, who worked with Kelly between 1992 and 1997 and is still a close friend, says: "If she'd been here, I'm sure she would have been heading Nedbank quite successfully."
Th at is some claim, especially as none of SA's big four banks has yet appointed a female boss.
Kaplan says: "No-one at Nedbank came close to her. I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that had she stayed, Nedbank might not have gone through what it did earlier this decade." Nedbank had to be recapitalised after a disast rous string of write-downs.
So what makes Kelly such a corporate catch?
When asked to put his finger on it, Muller is vague. He ascribes her success to her determination to swot up on the credit card business until she became an expert, as well as her "all-round ability, incredible people skills and being hard-working and bright".
Kaplan says her leadership skills were obvious from the start. "She came in to card division with no experience, and immediately recognised the need to get the right people around her. She was able to motivate them into achieving her goals."
Though her family is now overseas, Kelly still travels to SA often, visiting game parks and friends.
Says Kaplan: "She came to dinner at my house a few weeks back, days before the announcement was made that she would take the Westpac job."
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