The woman whom Forbes magazine has described as the “most powerful woman in finance in Australia” announced her decision to retire from Westpac yesterday morning.
Westpac’s current chief executive for Australian financial services Brian Hartzer has been as revealed as Ms Kelly’s successor.
Addressing a press conference yesterday morning, Ms Kelly spoke about her humble beginnings as a bank teller in Johannesburg 35 years ago.
She focused on Westpac’s successful integration of St George, making special mention of the wealth management businesses Asgard, Securitor, Advance and Ascalon.
“I think about BT [Financial Group] and we have an industry leadership position particularly with the strong alignment of our wealth business with our banking businesses under our Australian financial services model,” she said.
However, Ms Kelly was reluctant to answer questions about her $12.8 million remuneration package for 2014, deferring to her chairman Lindsay Maxted.
While he acknowledged $12.8 million was a “big number”, Mr Maxted said it is only big “in isolation”.
“It fits really well into the whole way in which we would want to remunerate our executives, and the way in which shareholders and governance agencies [are recommending],” he said.
“The really big number in there is the vesting of the coming out of the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 for Gail. Through that period our total shareholder return was at the top end for that spectrum,” Mr Maxted said.
“When we set that plan, Gail’s performance rights were set at $22 a share and by the time they vested they were $33 a share.
“So, absolutely and unashamedly, Gail is a beneficiary of that share price going from $22 to $33, but so is everyone else who owns a Westpac share – and that’s why it comes out at the number that it does,” he said.
