If you type “Paul Harris” into Google, you’ll get results for a London fashion label, the South African cricketer, a Rotary fellowship, a basketball player and a magician. You’ll also get a couple of results that refer to Harris, one of the three friends who founded the FirstRand group and the company’s current chief executive.
Harris keeps a fairly low profile compared with his partners, Laurie Dippenaar and GT Ferreira, but, at 56, he is the only one of the three who keeps a hands-on approach in the business they built. When not looking after his wine farm Tokara, Ferreira chairs the FirstRand board, and Dippenaar — previously CEO — is a non-executive director.
Earlier this week, Harris apparently said he would take responsibility for First National Bank’s anti-crime advertising campaign, which was pulled at the last minute. A journalist commented that this sense of loyalty and responsibility characterises Harris through and through. “He’s very straight, very honest, you don’t mess him around,” she said. “He’s not a soft, cuddly teddy bear at all.”
After a request for an interview was turned down, the Mail & Guardian decided to interview people who know Harris.
“Those piercing blue eyes,” said the journalist. “They look straight through you. Blowtorch eyes.”
While Harris may avoid the limelight, his staff clearly worship him.
“He’s absolutely fantastic; it’s an honour and a privilege to work for him,” said a staffer. “The best boss I’ve ever had.” She added that he was “passionate about life and about everything he does”. Harris, she said, is an empowering leader.”You do what you have to do and he doesn’t stand over your shoulder.”
As a FirstRand man, members of the group will always be “his team”. He is “one of the boys”, with a work- hard, play-hard approach to life. “He’ll really bat for his team, and he doesn’t believe in passing the buck,” the journalist said.
He still finds time to sit on the board of Cricket South Africa and is said to love spending time in the bush. He hasn’t followed Ferreira into wine farming, but plays golf and collects South African art. Remgro’s Johann Rupert, who this week came out in support of Harris, also counts Harris as a director on the Remgro board.
Harris had been working at the Industrial Development Corporation in 1977, where he was an investigating officer in structured finance, when he joined Dippenaar and Ferreira at the grandly-named Rand Consolidated Investments (RCI), then in operation for just three months. The two needed a new partner as Paul Goss had left to run a trading store in the then-Transkei. Initally RCI concentrated on structured finance, but in 1985 it was able to buy Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) from Rupert, a move which gave them a long-sought-after banking licence.
In the meantime, Harris was busy building what is now RMB Australia. He founded Australian Gilt Securities in Sydney in 1987, which is now involved in private equity, resources and energy in New Zealand and Australia. In 1992 Harris was appointed CEO of RMB, which took over Momentum and started several other well-known brands including Discovery and OUTsurance. But the kicker came in 1998, when RMB merged its financial interests with those of Anglo American, which was frantically unbundling at the time. This gave it control of the newly formed FirstRand group, one of the JSE’s largest groups. The new CEO of First National Bank was, naturally, Harris, and last month he took over as chief of the entire group after Dippenaar stepped down.
And after just one month in the new job, he is already embroiled in one of the biggest controversies between business and government in recent times.