Sim Tshabalala hasn’t lost his sense of awe at the institution’s role in transformation, writes Richard Stovin-Bradford
Standard Bank group chief executive Jacko Maree has described last year as momentous for the bank because it weathered tumultuous global financial markets, completed further acquisitions in emerging markets, sold 20% of its equity to Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and beat its financial targets.
For Sim Tshabalala, 40, the CEO of the bank’s domestic personal and business banking division, this year is already momentous. He takes over as CEO of the group’s main operating unit, Standard Bank of South Africa, in June.
“This is an important moment for me and for South Africa because it says Standard Bank is transforming and that the country is on the move — and let’s have more of it,” Tshabalala said.
Pausing at the end of the day of his appointment to gather his thoughts, Tshabalala’s first sentiment was gratitude to his parents. “Mum and dad should rightfully feel proud of all the sacrifices they made over the decades. My folks made massive sacrifices for me, a ragamuffin on the dusty streets of Soweto.
Tshabalala is one of three children. He has a younger brother in the business world and a sister who works in marketing for a public corporation.
“Mum and dad scraped together every cent they had to send me to Marist Brothers in Observatory, Johannesburg, and I was brought up as a Catholic. Now my kids are getting the same education. Tshabalala said Brother Neil McGurk was his mentor at school and still exerted a major influence on his life.
It is becoming clearer why, in any conversation, Tshabalala so often quotes the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, St Augustine and St Jerome. His love of the first of the three also begins to explain his fascination with natural theology. All explain his love of humanity.
The Marist Brothers’ motto translates as “strive for better things.” Tshabalala has certainly put it into practice.
He obtained a BA at Rhodes University, majoring in his beloved philosophy and legal theory, but also finding time to partake in “acceptable amounts of the fruits of Bacchus”. After Rhodes he began articles at law firm Bowman Gilfillan.
But Tshabalala is a serial student. He interrupted his Bowman Gilfillan career to complete an LLM degree in public international law at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
Any day now, he will fly to the US to attend an executive programme at Harvard University.
He was admitted as an attorney in April 1994. “But I hated being a lawyer because you are always at the centre of things and not driving things. I wanted to thump the table, not advise people how hard to thump it,” Tshabalala said.
While at Bowman Gilfillan, he had met Adrian Vardy, one of the founders of Durolink, a structured finance boutique that became Real Africa Durolink. He joined Durolink and was soon in his element.
“I learned a huge amount about credit risk, market risk, interest-rate swaps and other derivatives, sale and lease backs, and all aspects of structured finance as we arranged financing for major projects,” Tshabalala said.
He soon became director in charge of the division and it was in this role that he met members of the then Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank (SCMB) team in the late ’90s.
He was noticed by current Standard Bank domestic corporate and investment bank CEO David Munro and his boss Ben Kruger, who has just been made a group chief operating officer alongside Peter Wharton-Hood.
Tshabalala, feeling the need to keep striving, left Real Africa Durolink just as his wife Lebo fell pregnant with the first of their two daughters. Munro was quick to pick up the phone, calling him the day he resigned.
In no time, he was hired, joining SCMB as the director in charge of its structured finance team in 2000. His move to Standard was well-timed: the following year, Real Africa Durolink had to be bailed out by PSG Investment Bank (now part of Absa) after losing R196-million before tax on an abnormally large option trading position.
But Standard likes to expose promising executives to a variety of roles. Tshabalala became managing director of Stanbic Africa, the bank’s continental operation, in 2001.
“Africa was an experience conducive to humility. The African continent teaches you a lesson or two about life,” he said. “I could have done the Africa job for much longer, but I ran a career risk because I’d moved out of investment banking into the stratosphere of commercial banking in Africa.”
He asked if he could work in retail banking with Wharton- Hood, who was then the head of retail banking. “I have not looked back since,” he said.
He threw himself into the deep end, with the Competition Commission inquiry into bank charges, the implementation of the Basel II accord on capital adequacy and risk management, and anti-money laundering legislation, at the same time ensuring that Standard Bank remained competitive in its home market as new entrants chased its business.
“It’s been an amazing couple of years in the retail bank, working on strategy to build assets and improve risk management — but it’s quite hard to change the course of a super tanker in a hurry.
“Banking is really quite simple … in the investment banking area you deal with larger amounts but fewer clients, but in retail banking, you multiply the clients by thousands and millions — and that’s where the complexity can come in.”
Tshabalala said that in practical terms, he had learned a “massive amount” from Wharton-Hood. But he also reads extensively around his subject and is fascinated by the history of banking. “Banking’s a human endeavour. We give people the ability to be active economic agents, we allow small businesses to perform and we are in a position to facilitate transformation — banking’s great fun really.”
What will change under Tshabalala? “There’s no crisis, so why should there be a change in strategy? I’ll be part of a disciplined team that’s been together for a long time and I hope that I can influence what that team does,” he said.
Most of all, he hopes that he will contribute to the long-term profitability of the bank and to the acceleration of transformation in South Africa, saying: “Standard is such an important organ of our society and we are fundamental to transformation — our executives have an awful responsibility.”
