Maria Ramos Quotes

Maria Ramos
Nov 2006

"‘I don’t pay you for your ego. Leave it outside and get the job done ... or it will count against you" Maria Ramos, relating what she said to her staff recently in Cape Town (Sunday Times)

SAA
25 Oct 2006

Maria Ramos steps down from her position as a non-executive director of the SA Airways board (In light of the considerable progress made in separating SAA from Transnet, Ms Ramos felt it appropriate to step down from the airline’s board).

Jonny Steinberg
23 Oct 2006

"I have lost count of the number of businesspeople who swear that all policing in Johannesburg needs is the recruitment of some talent and charisma from the outside. Something like a Maria Ramos in uniform." Jonny Steinberg writing in Business Day 2006-10-23

Maria Ramos
Oct 2006

"Absolutely not. I think minister Manuel has his own portfolio to deal with, and I have mine. We've always kept work and our private lives seperate." Ramos on whether her relationship with Trevor Manuel gives her political cover.

Maria Ramos
Oct 2006

"This is an organisation that had for many years learnt how to sweep all of the problems under every mat that was available. Nobody ever spoke about the problems until they became a crisis. I knew at that point that there were many executives that would not last a year." Ramos speaking about her early days at Transnet.

Maria Ramos
October 2006

"What we wanted to do was to maximise the value of that asset. Once you set a process and set criteria you have to follow it... you can't come to the end of it and somebody doesn't like (the buyers) and change the process at the end. As it happened the winning bidder was a consortium that has local and foreign participation. Their commitment is to a long term investment... return on capital appreciation is a long term investment." Ramos responding to a question from an African National Congress MP who asked whether the V&A Waterfront deal was "selling the family silver" and coincided with a State sanctions probe into the question of foreign ownership of South African land.

1 Jan 2004

Ramos is appointed Group CEO at Transnet

3 July 1996

South Africa's cabinet appoints Ramos as director-general of Finance, in the Ministry of Finance.

May 1995

Deputy Director-General: Financial Planning - Department of Finance

1994-1995

Research Officer, London School of Economics

1991

Fulbright Scholarship (not taken up)

1991-1992

British Council Scholarship

1991-1994

Lecturer in economics at the University of the Witwatersrand

1990-1994

Economist for the African National Congress department of economic planning

1989-1991

Lecturer in economics at the University of South Africa.

1988

Senbank prize for honours dissertation

1983

Barclays graduate scholarship

1978-1989

As her family were too poor to pay for university, she took a job as a clerk at a Barclays Bank in Vereeniging. When Ramos found out about a Barclays Bank scholarship restricted to men, she shamed the bank into changing its policy.

Maria Ramos

Came to South Africa as a child with her mother and bricklayer father.

1959

Born in Lisbon, Portugal.

11 October 2006