PROFILE
Michael Jordaan:
the big picture
and the detail
Carl Momberg speaks to FNB’s innovation-minded CEO
14
SA BANKER
Edition 2
make suggestions but they aren’t always followed, and I do make
the internet banking transfers each month,’ he jokes.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
There’s the old adage: ‘If something seems to be too good to be true,
it is too good to be true.’ That doesn’t apply in Michael’s case, but
one must ask what gave the bank the confidence to appoint Michael
as CEO in 2004. He was very young – 36 at the time – which must
have posed an element of risk for a bank with 30 000 staff.
Former FirstRand CEO Paul Harris knows Michael very well,
since he worked as Paul’s business assistant for some time. So what
convinced them? ‘Michael certainly has the intellect and academic
qualifications to run the bank. However, what persuaded us was his
leadership qualities and ability to see the big picture while at the
same time having a great feel for the detail.’
Murray Legg, a more recent member of Rand Merchant Bank’s
Class Of programme (which attracts young talent into RMB)
wrote in his blog: ‘Michael believes that the best ideas for business
can be constructed and realised by the staff, within branches and
doing daily work. There is a large amount of focus and energy
dedicated to growing and supporting these innovative and
entrepreneurial developments.’
Continued »
FNB
M
ichael Jordaan (or MJ, as he’s widely known)
has a passion for banking combined with a love
for technology. ‘I love my job. I’ve said I’d be
happy to work for nothing,’ he says.
Where does he come from? ‘I’m a Stellenbosch
boy. I went to Paul Roos and did all my studies at the University
of Stellenbosch.’ That includes a PhD in Economics focusing on
banking supervision. There was never any doubt that he would
follow a banking career, because numbers and finance held his
interest from his earliest school days.
More recently, he’s gone back to his Stellenbosch roots with the
purchase of a wine farm there. His grandfather bought Bartinney
in 1952 and Michael was very disappointed when his father sold
it about 15 years ago. When the farm came back on the market
about six years ago, Michael and his wife – also from Stellenbosch
– decided to buy it back.
After trying to run it from Johannesburg with a manager on the
farm, they found it just wasn’t working. Over a bottle of red wine
and dinner at a restaurant one night, Rose suggested that she and the
children move to Stellenbosch to run the farm, and Michael joined a
long list of business leaders who spend their weeks in Johannesburg
and their weekends in the Cape. ‘So I’m the silent partner. I can