Gail Kelly

Gail Kelly, born Currer, ( born April 25, 1956 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an Australian bank manager. Since 2008 she directs Westpac, one of Australia's leading banks. Forbes magazine ranks the top one hundred most powerful women Kelly in the world.

Life and work

Childhood and education in South Africa

Gail Kelly was born on 25 April 1956 in the capital of South Africa, the daughter of a real estate agent. Her parents were of English origin. Kelly attended an Anglican, school managed by nuns, was spoken in English and taught. After that, she studied Latin and modern history at the University of Cape Town. There she met in 1974 Allan Kelly know, who studied Social Work. In December 1977 she married after both had finished their studies successfully. Kelly earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a teaching certificate. Then the couple moved to Rhodesia.

Career beginnings in Rhodesia and South Africa

Kelly took a job 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. 1978 his military service was over. They moved back to South Africa, where he continued in Johannesburg his education at the medical faculty of the University of Witwatersrand. Kelly taught history at a public school, however, was unhappy in their jobs.

Kelly's father gave her a job with the South African bank Nedcor, which they took on 14 January 1980. First, Kelly was there employed as a cashier, but was then included in a training program and quickly rose. In 1986 she took a year off and worked at the University of Witwatersrand an MBA with distinction, while she was pregnant with her first child. In January of the following year they returned to their profession and experienced there a break in the South African banking, which developed in the 1980s increasingly new areas such as personal loans and credit risk management for the deregulation and expansion of the money market. On November 11, 1989 Kelly mother of triplets and paused five months. Then she took a position as Head of Human Resources at Nedcor. Her husband worked in the pediatric HIV clinic. Since he was confronted with the darker sides of growing up of children in South Africa, he urged increasingly looking to leave the country.

Careers in Australia

In October 1997, Kelly and her family moved to Sydney. There, she was general manager of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and was the head of Strategic Marketing. Soon she and her family took to the Australian citizenship. On January 14, 2002 Kelly moved to St. George Bank and was a month later its CEO. So she led the first woman to 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 for the same amount. In May 2007, Charles Sturt University Kelly awarded an honorary doctorate for her services in finance.

Since February 1, 2008 Kelly is the CEO of Westpac. Three months later, Westpac took over St George Bank and thus rose to the largest bank in Australia. That same year, Kelly was listed by Forbes ranked 11th most powerful woman in the world. Since then she has published annually on the list of 100 most powerful women, their highest score was 8th place in 2010. Forbes based its decision on the fact that Kelly was the most influential Australian businesswoman and each expression 'm made of it within a short time by the media publicized. Since late 2009, she had drawn, for example, by a drastic increase in the loan interest the ire of many Australians in coming. This they reasoned with low savings rates in Australia, making the financing for banks is more expensive. She wanted to encourage Australians to increased savings.