A Female Banker
Makes Her Mark
NEIL COHEN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I
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here are very few female
bankers anywhere. Israel
will have its first in a few
weeks time, provided that
a modest legal hurdle is over-
come.
Galia Maor, 52, Bank Leumi's
managing director-designate, has
always been on the fast track. Af-
ter ascending the ranks of the
Bank of Israel, where she worked
while still a student, she was ap-
pointed Israel's supervisor of
banks at the tender age of 38.
Ms. Maor is remembered as a
tough banking supervisor who
was never afraid to say no. For
example, she turned down a
number of applicants for bank-
ing licenses, and her response to
the Postal Bank's request to op-
erate as a commercial bank corn-
pared the Postal Bank to a blood
bank.
She limited how much of its eq-
uity a bank could give as a single
loan, enforcing efficiency mea-
sures on the banks.
But most Israelis remember
her tenure for the criticism she
received from the Bejski Corn-
mission in the aftermath of the
bank share crisis.
Ms. Maor became supervisor
just under a year before the bank
share collapse in October 1983
and the commission criticized her
for not taking sufficiently ener-
getic steps. Having defended her
actions forcefully in front of the
committee, Ms. Maor reportedly
burst into tears at the rebuke.
Indeed, the legal hurdle stand-
ing in the way of Ms. Maor's pro-
motion is a petition filed in the
Israel Supreme Court by the
Stock Market Victims Associa-
tion asking the court to disqual-
ify her on the grounds of her
involvement in the bank shares
collapse. Given the amount of
time that has elapsed, and the
fact that the Bejski Commission
did not call for Ms. Maor's re-
moval as banking supervisor, le-
gal experts see little chance of the
petition succeeding. Since the
Treasury and the Bank of Israel
approved the appointment, and
the state attorney agreed to rep-
resent Ms. Maor at the hearing,
Leumi's board unanimously ap-
proved her appointment.
It is somewhat ironic that Ms.
Maor may to some extent owe her
current position to the bank
shares collapse and the Bejski
Commission, since they took out
of circulation an entire genera-
tion of senior bankers, making
way for the former government
officials who largely run the
banks today to step into their
shoes.
The other unpleasant episode
in her career was the North
American Bank collapse in 1985.
Observers at the time wondered
how the bank had cut major cor-
ners under the nose of the bank-
ing supervisor, and Nissim
Gaon's family sued her. They
claimed she was responsible for
the collapse.
Another suit filed by two for-
eign investors claimed that the
Bank of Israel and the Treasury
had helped the bank obtain a se-
cret $10 million loan which had
propped up its inflated share
price.
Ms. Maor stayed on at the
Bank of Israel until 1989. During
her cooling-off period, she worked
as a consultant to accounting firm
Somekh Chaikin and also chaired
the kibbutz arrangement com-
mittee.
She also advised the World
Bank in Turkey and Yugoslavia.
In 1991, she joined Leumi as a
compromise candidate for the job
of deputy managing director.
During her time at Leumi,
Maor has focused on the retail
end of the bank. Hayashir Har-
ishon, Leumi's new telephone
A big job with big
problems.
banking operation, is very much
her baby and is indicative of
where she is likely to take the
bank.
She is known to be very tech-
nology-oriented and a great be-
liever in the increasing
computerization of banking ser-
vices. She has told colleagues that
the new realities of retail bank-
ing will require a new arsenal of
increasingly sophisticated tools
and skills, in both marketing and
technology.
The bank is already moving to-
ward splitting the population ac-
cording to the kinds of services it
wants, while training and per-
formance assessment will become
more service-oriented.
One of the corollaries of this
strategy will be a leaner Bank
Leumi.
If Ms. Maor is going to get the
bank's profits on a solid growth
track, she will have to attack
costs, which may not prove easy.
She is said to acknowledge that
there is waste in the banking sys-
tem and that Leumi is no excep-
tion. But job cuts will almost
certainly lead to confrontation
with the works committee.
FEMALE BANKER page 50