Absa chair Gill Marcus had clearly prepared a script to read when she was asked about the possibility of a conflict of interest in appointing Maria Ramos, whose partner is finance minister Trevor Manuel, as new CEO.

“This is something the board considered. But the board’s view was that there is a relationship between the bank and the banking regulator, which is housed in the SA Reserve Bank. There is no line of sight at all with the minister of finance,” she said last week.

Marcus didn’t address this very pertinent question until asked late in the impromptu press conference, but she’d clearly been expecting it.

But her explanation seems flimsy. The finance ministry is, after all, ultimately responsible for banking policy. It was Manuel who approved the sale of Absa to Barclays in 2004, and just last week, he was talking about the international push to revamp the regulation of banks.

Ramos echoed Marcus’s sentiment, saying she lived her professional life “with integrity”, and expected no special favours from anyone.

Sure, but the real danger is the perception of conflict, rather than the actual granting of any special favours.

Sanlam Investment Management global fund manager Kokkie Kooyman says it is an unhealthy situation.

“Strictly speaking, there is a conflict. The risk is that when anything major happens, and Absa acts first, there will be talk. Neither Absa nor treasury would want this kind of finger-pointing, so a lot of people are deducing that Manuel won’t remain after the next election,” he says.

Absa was worried enough to prepare a 483-word statement to send to troublesome media. The gist was that neither Absa nor the registrar will allow anything to have an impact on their “integrity”.

But there is an apposite cautionary tale of exactly this sort playing out overseas. A furious row is raging in Norway over the friendship between Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Rune Bjerke, the CEO of the country’s largest bank, DnB NOR. Days before Stoltenberg announced a government plan to boost bank liquidity, which cut the value of government bonds, DnB NOR sold a chunk of these bonds to rival banks.

Manuel’s spokesman, Thoraya Pandy, says Manuel “does not get involved in the day-to-day functions of the banks”.

Pandy says the man in charge of banks is registrar Errol Kruger who “always aspired to give effect to his independent mandate”.

Kruger, who is in the process of approving Ramos’s appointment, told the FM he did not see any conflict. “It doesn’t concern me at all. There is a very clear division of duties under the Banks Act. Around the world, bankers typically have strong relations with their ministries of finance in any event,” he said.

Absa’s gain, however, is Nedbank’s loss. Ramos was rumoured to have spoken to Nedbank prior to Tom Boardman’s appointment as CEO in 2003, and again now as a possible successor for when he leaves in February 2010. But when asked which other companies she had spoken to, Ramos refused to answer.

But the timing has raised questions. Why is Booysen leaving now, with 2½ years to go on his contract until 2011?

Some speculated his departure might have pre-empted a nasty bad-debt shock, but Absa insiders say this wasn’t the case. “Steve told the board in June they should start searching for a successor, and they got lucky with Maria,” says one.

Officially, Absa made much of the fact that Ramos came “on the market” now, and given the difficulty of finding a new CEO, it was as good a time as any.

But is it really that difficult to find a new CEO? “No, it’s not difficult at all,” Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza told the FM. He should know, given the search for a successor to Boardman.

“We’ve already spoken to quite a number of people, both internally and outside the company. We started timeously, and cast our net wide,” he says.

Khoza says Nedbank is close to naming a successor. But he denies Ramos was talking to Nedbank. “If she did, it must have been very informally,” he says.

Though securing Ramos is a coup for Absa, her challenges will be to manage any perception of a conflict of interest (as long as Manuel remains minister) and to keep a lid on Absa’s bad debts.

Ramos’s record suggests she is well qualified. When she joined Transnet, it had just reported a R421m loss, and had a ratio of debt-to-capital of 83%. This year, it reported a R8,7bn profit, while its debt-to-capital ratio has fallen to 29%.

But Absa is hardly in need of a turnaround. For the six months to June, amid a global banking implosion, it managed a 24% jump in profit to R5,6bn.

Given that platform and Ramos’s record, Absa may yet challenge Standard Bank’s title as SA’s top bank.