For over 120 years, Standard Chartered Bank has been a part of Botswana’s political economy.
The bank’ tagline, “Here for Good” is perhaps the most enduring testimony of the titan’s dedication and longevity in the country.
Executives at the bank like to discount longevity, preferring instead to emphasise a commitment to always participate at that which is good for the country as the true motive of that tagline.
Yet this week there were many doubts about that tagline when from nowhere, the Chief Executive Officer, Moatlhodi Lekaukau tendered his resignation.
Nobody saw it coming.
And to allay the many fears and suspicions, the bank’s Chairman, Professor Bojosi Otlhogile found himself dragged before a rare media conference to answer a flurry of questions from the media.
Lekaukau’s resignation had nothing to do with the bad press that Standard Chartered Bank Botswana has been receiving lately, said Otlhogile.
“It was never my intention to stay here for over five years,” added Lekaukau, a thoughtful yet detached business executive with a dispassion about him that often borders on the arrogance.
His ambition now, he says is to go on a sabbatical. And spend more time with his family.
“I want to take a gap. I have been working non-stop for over seventeen years,” he told a small group of inquisitive reporters.
He invoked the likes of Koos Bekker, the legendary South African billionaire who famously created the Naspers media group into a sprawling global conglomerate after spending months of aimless travel in the United States.
Another business luminary that Lekaukau has in mind as he ventures into the unknown leaving behind one of Botswana’s highest paying jobs is Alan Knott-Craig, a distinguished telecommunications executive behind the creation of the iconic Vodacom group.
“These two men had been in a long sabbatical, [the kind he wants to take] cruising in a ship before coming up with ideas that changed the world.”
These are comparisons that will find few buyers, under the circumstances.
If the intention was to dampen any lingering suspicions about circumstances surrounding Lekaukau resignation the result has been to raise even more questions, more rumours and even more of the same suspicions.
When Lekaukau was roped in to run Standard Chartered Bank Botswana just over five years ago, the bank was miles away from recovering from the headwinds that had come from global economic meltdown that had not spared Botswana.
He said at the time that he never really had wanted to apply for the job, but was drawn to it by an acquaintance.
He was at the time still having a good time working as Head of Mergers and Acquisitions at Deloitte in Johannesburg.
He arrived at Standard Chartered Bank Botswana to see a bank overwhelmed by a deepening crisis. Morale among staff was it its lowest.
The bank’s profits were on a precipitous decline. The balance sheet was on a tailspin. Main shareholders in London and Asia were jittery, unnerved by the prospect of a cesspool they saw fast coming their way from Botswana.
The future of their long time cash cow and crown jewel was at its most uncertain.
“I enjoy turnarounds,” Lekaukau told Sunday standard a few weeks after taking over.
His first task was to assemble a team of staff that industry peers are united in their assessment that it’s at the cutting edge of modern banking requirements.
Less than 50 percent of executive management was expatriate, a source of a stormy relationship with the Bank of Botswana, the chief regulator.
The resurrection was sudden and unmistakable.
Today over 90 percent of executive management are Botswana citizens.
During that same time balance sheet almost doubled. Processes were put in place to tap into hitherto unchartered potential, chiefly the blossoming SMEs.
For Standard Chartered Bank Botswana, as indeed for Lekaukau, the rollercoaster ride often felt like a dream, at least when it lasted.
The grey-suited CEO would from time to time wax lyrical that it was finally Africa’s time, catching what at the time often sounded like a political bug.
“Africa is the only place in the world where growth is the double digits,” he said at the time.
And everything seemed to be going his way.
With the assistance of the Group he presided over a P1 billion deal with the Botswana Government owned Okavango Diamonds.
It was a deal that if not cementing Standard Chartered Bank’s place in Botswana’s hallowed banking halls, then at least served to restore some measure of pride and dignity that had been lost when latter day arrivals like FNBB swept the rug off from underneath the feet of the old juggernaut.
How big a difference five years can make!
“I have never seen myself doing one job for over five years. It is never easy as a CEO to reinvent oneself,” Lekaukau said this week.
“Five months ago I started asking myself what I needed to do. Talking to myself I didn’t see anything. And that is when I started evaluating opportunities to leave.”
“In our banking world there is never a perfect time to leave,” in a clear reference to the risks of leaving at a time when the bank has been in the public spot for bad reasons.
As Lekaukau announces his departure from Standard Chartered Bank Botswana of acute concern, for shareholders as well staff caught between a wry feeling of d├®j├ávu gripping the air as well as an uncertain future ahead.
There is concern that he leaves the bank in exactly the same position that he found it; profits are on the decline. Fundamentals might be strong, but across the country economic headwinds are gaining pace driving down prospects.
The bank is currently on a closed period with full year results expected within a month.
With the closure of BCL expected to weigh heavily on those results, not many are holding their breath in anticipation of roof-breaking profits.
And most importantly there is concern that his blue chip accomplishment, which has been to attract and retain some of the industry’s best talent to the bank might in the end be among the first casualties of his departure.
Standard Chartered Bank Botswana is by no measure a sinking ship, but in the end its future is as blurred and as foggy as the very reasons behind Lekaukau’s sudden and unexpected departure.
As Lekaukau’s peer in the banking industry put it, “Moatlhodi will forever be talked of as a man who saved Standard Chartered Bank only for him to desert it at a time when the bank needed his services most.”
