Gail Kelly (née Currer) 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 CEO of

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

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

Early life and education

Gail Currer was born in

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

, South Africa. Currer attended the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

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.

Career

Teacher

The couple moved to

Rhodesia Rhodesia ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state, unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the ''de facto'' Succession of states, successor state to the ...

(now

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

), where she taught Latin at Falcon College while he served in the Rhodesian Army. They returned to South Africa, where Allan Kelly studied medicine at the

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

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) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

at Wits Business School, the graduate school of business administration of the

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 ' ...

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), also known as Commonwealth Bank or simply CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of fi ...

in July 1997. 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 by the Commonwealth Bank) but Kelly increased the bank's

profitability In economics, profit is the difference between revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and total costs of its inputs, also known as surplus value. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both Explicit co ...

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 The phrase return on average assets (ROAA) is also used, to emphasize that average as ...

. 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 AO, 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 Air New Zealand Limited () is the flag carrier of New Zealand. Based in Auckland, the airline operates scheduled passenger flights to 20 domestic and 28 international destinations in 18 countries, primarily within the Pacific Rim. The airline h ...

. 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. The merger was approved by the

Federal Court of Australia The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court 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 indictable (mo ...

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.

Book

In August 2017, Kelly's memoir, ''Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership'' was published by

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

. The book details her experiences of being a high-profile businesswoman and a mother of four.

Impact and influence

In 2010 Kelly was named 8th most powerful woman in the world by ''Forbes''; in 2014, she was listed was 56th place.

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, 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 Year of birth missing (living people) 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