Absa after Maria Ramos

Just a week ago, Maria Ramos was at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, seemingly entrenched in her role as the CEO of Absa. During an interview with the FM, she gave no clue that within days of returning to SA, that would change.

On Tuesday, Ramos revealed that after a decade at the bank, she felt it was "the right time to retire" at the end of February, for two reasons. First, she turns 60 on February 22, and second, the divorce from Barclays is complete and "our new strategy as a standalone financial institution in place".

Ramos said in Davos that she’d had three big careers: first as director-general of the National Treasury in Nelson Mandela’s administration; second as the CEO of Transnet until 2009; then as CEO of Absa. Does she have the passion to embark on what would be a fourth?

Perhaps alluding to what was coming less than a week later, Ramos spoke about her status, with Nedbank CEO Mike Brown, as one of the country’s longest-serving CEOs.

Her 10-year reign, she said, could hardly be described as the norm internationally, where CEOs tend to stick around for only about half that. "That’s because we live in a dynamic world and we need renewal," she said.

Considering that she had just overseen the bank’s most recent reinvention — the separation from Barclays — that might have been a hint. The question now is what is next for Ramos, who has been a feature of SA’s public life since the advent of democracy.

At Davos, she was constantly by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s side, which suggests there may be a future for her back in public life.

Asked about this possibility, she brushed it aside. "I felt very privileged to have been able to serve our country as a public servant," she said. "That for me was very, very special. You do that and you go on and do something else."

That, of course, was last week, before her "retirement".

At Davos, Absa was keen to highlight its new-found independence as a global bank.

At the Promenade, Davos’s main street, the bank had pride of place as the only SA corporate with its own store. Any of the delegates could pop in to discuss the state of the world while grabbing a Ugandan coffee or Kenyan tea.

It was somewhat surreal to be sitting at an Absa branch and see snow-covered trees outside. But it was a symbolic act of genius as Absa seeks to signal its identity as an independent player after 14 years as a unit of Barclays.

Ramos’s show of force during the meeting of the global elite seemed to be a worthy investment, as just under 50% of Absa’s shareholders sit outside SA.

In particular, she spoke of Absa’s efforts to retain investors, clients and staff as an obvious concern.

"These things are important, and we have not taken any of that lightly," she said. "We’ve engaged a lot of customers and clients in every single market. We spent a huge amount of time thinking about what the brand was going to look like. It’s not just about the brand, it’s about service, it’s about engagement, it’s about reaching out to every client."

Though René van Wyk, the former registrar of banks, will step in as Absa’s acting CEO from March 1, it seems the process of finding a replacement has kicked off. Ramos’s replacement is expected to come from outside the bank.

In an interview with Business Day TV, Absa chair Wendy Lucas-Bull said Ramos’s replacement would have to be a financial executive who "commanded internal and external respect".

Absa has already spoken to candidates and will announce the new CEO by the time of its half-year results in August.

Asked about leadership at Davos, Ramos spoke of the need to surround yourself with a team of people smarter than you, who can move the organisation forward after you’ve left.

She had warm words for Lesetja Kganyago, one of her protégés who replaced her as director-general at the Treasury, before going on to become governor of the SA Reserve Bank in 2014. "You do these jobs and you hope what you leave behind you is people who are better than you," she said. At the Treasury, the team led by Kganyago were "unbelievable and they did things under his leadership that I couldn’t have done", she added.

But the fact that Van Wyk will take over on an interim basis may prompt a degree of suspicion that Ramos’s departure may not have been as planned or amicable as the bank’s public statements would have us believe. After all, it has fallen behind competitors in some of its key retail and business banking divisions, and has lost its leadership in home loans. This was, to some extent, due to the fact that Barclays had intentionally curbed Absa’s risk appetite. As Avior analyst Harry Botha told Bloomberg: "For a long time she was doing what Barclays wanted to … she presided over Absa while Barclays destroyed the retail franchise."

But there is also now new competition, with Adrian Gore’s Discovery Bank and TymeBank, the start-up owned by African Rainbow Capital, which is controlled by Patrice Motsepe, set to be sniping.

Sim Tshabalala, CEO of Standard Bank, one of the traditional banks that will be challenged by the new entrants, was already talking six months ago about how he was bracing himself for the arrival of a fierce competitor in the form of Discovery Bank.

Given how Discovery has disrupted financial services from medical aid to life insurance, it is a well-placed concern.

So it raises the question of whether the traditional banks need a different sort of leader.