[Here is an internal FNB memo to staff regarding the story which the newspapers had about the crime pull out which occurred before the weekend. Jan]

FNB is Proudly South African

Dear Colleagues,As you know FNB™s vision statement is to be a great business, helping to create a better South Africa. We care deeply about our beautiful country. This is why we launched Nation Building Initiatives such as South Africa – The Good News, The Homecoming Revolution and the Heartlines Values Campaign. We are proud that we have positively influenced consumer sentiment, have encouraged skills to return and stimulated a national debate around values.

As a nation builder we do run the risk of not acknowledging crime as a serious problem. We could have chosen to simply ignore the topic. Yet we believe that without decisive action to curb crime, it could undermine all efforts to realise our country™s social and economic potential.

It™s not necessary to remind you of the impact crime has on our business and society. We™ve experienced 7 robberies since January and more than 150 of our staff have been traumatized. The papers are full of stories on crime and public comments are highly emotional, seldom constructive and undermine confidence. Fortunately we have the credibility to be constructively critical.

This weekend we had intended to launch a nationwide campaign focusing on crime prevention and appealing to the President to make crime the Nation™s Number One Priority. We wanted to pledge the support of FNB, our staff, our customers and the public for all efforts to fight crime. This campaign was intended to help build the nation.

Having consulted widely with a range of stakeholders last week we realised that our good intentions could have unintended consequences. We were concerned that the campaign could be misinterpreted. It was never intended to jeopardise any of the hard work and progress of ongoing initiatives between government and business. So at the last moment we decided to rather rework the campaign to ensure that our good intent, namely to make Crime prevention our Nation™s No 1 Priority is not misinterpreted. As you no doubt have seen, this made front-page news on Sunday and the debate is likely to rage on for a few days. We™ve decided the best course of action is to completely step out of this emotionally charged debate for now.

It is likely that customers will ask you what is happening. The answer is simple: We want to create a better South Africa, Crime has the potential to destroy our nation and we think it should be the Nation™s No 1 Priority. We™re not changing our point of view. We do want to get it across in the most constructive way, as we did with our other nation building initiatives.

Regards,XXXX