I reckon Michael Jordaan's scared of flying

Earlier this week, Jordaan announced on Twitter that he was stepping down, prompting a flood of responses from the gossips that follow him on this platform. From Twitter the gossip quickly spread to the media prompting the immediate question: "Did he go or was he pushed?"

Like others I listened to some of this and wondered about it too:
• Did Steve - the character that FNB's advertising created so successfully - recruit him for the 'beep-bank'?
• Had FNB's venture into e-bucks, petrol paybacks and new accounts backfired?
• Maybe all FNB's campaign had succeeded in doing was providing account holders with easy access to money and a credit card and these new account holders were defaulting in droves?
• Was affirmative action claiming another executive and reinforcing what John Simpson's BBC programme says - condemned as being slanted and untrue by the ANC and the DA - about the sad lack of a future for whites in South Africa?

It took me back to memories of Bob Aldworth - the egotistic implementer of the first BOB automated teller machines in South Africa reportedly named after him.

Aldworth's retirement (firing) from Barclays Bank, as it was then, also caused a flurry of speculation and talk of a 'cover-up' from the bank's cagey board of directors. It also prompted a flurry of Lionel Attwell gossip exposes about his relationship with Sandra van der Merwe.

"Fear of Flying" couldn't be blamed then. It hadn't been written.

Pub-chat was the limit

In Aldworth's days, Twitter didn't exist and the Internet was a pipedream so the gossipmongers were confined to the pubs of downtown Johannesburg or the Café Royale in Cape Town.

When I heard about Jordaan's resignation I too wondered about South Africa's current whipping boy of affirmative action: was Jordaan giving up at FNB because the glass ceiling was reached years back and a unworthy successor with government connections had to be appointed so that lucrative government contracts could be secured.

I thought about all these things until I started looking at the facts.

Here they are:
• Jordaan announced in 2010 that at the end of 2013 he'd leave the bank. So quitting is nothing new.
• Jordaan has been commuting to Johannesburg - from his home in Cape Town - for the past five years. That's a stack of flying (even in business class) and a mountain of time spent sitting in a confined space for four hours a week, sometimes more, doubtless giving yourself a deep-vein thrombosis in the process;
• Jordaan wants to spend more time with his family and more time mulling over a new challenge for the years that are left to enjoy;
• Jordaan will maintain close ties with the bank and serve on various committees and boards in a non-executive capacity;
• He's got a truckload of money so whatever 'problems' he might have, money is not one of them;
• His successor, Jacques Celliers, has been groomed for the job and will now work with Jordaan for six or seven months getting to know the ins and outs of his new job before flying solo from next year. And Celliers, in his own words, loves flying anyway, calling it his 'true passion'. Flying solo for Celliers should be no problem.

The rest of the speculation about Jordaan's resignation is rubbish.

He did the right thing... what he said he would do

He's done what any decent employee should do: made his plans known long ago and implemented them. Part of that plan was to step down at the end of 2013.

Of course there will be a stack of people saying that there is something ominous, strange or odd about his 'sudden resignation' because at the beginning of this year Jordaan publicly denied that he had any intention of going.

So at this stage I doubt:
• Jordaan has been recruited by Barclays to take over from Maria Ramos at Absa's helm. Or that he's going to any other bank for that matter;
• Jordaan intends moving into the public service to work closely with Lindiwe Sisulu to get the public service right;
• Jordaan is going into politics - like the late Zach de Beer who stepped down as a highly-rated and successful business leader groomed by Anglo American - and heading for Luthuli House, the Western Cape premiership, Mamphela Ramphele's Agang or any other political group.

I suspect, though, that there is some truth in my 'speculation' that Jordaan is sick or scared of flying. After at least 1,000 hours on board Mango, Kulula or SAA I'd be damned sick of it too.

And at 46, Jordaan's age, there's just so much more to keep you alive than sitting in a stuffy cabin in cigar-shaped box at 600km/h.

Where will Jordaan venture next?

Well my guess is that it won't be much more than 10km away from his family home in Cape Town - or wherever he chooses to live now.

So let's just wait and see.