Hostility in the press and among some conservative politicians is the one thing that makes Randa's jaw quiver and his face lose its icy composure. Is it possible that the man who has seized the Austrian banking sector and turned it on its head, at the cost of hundreds of jobs, would also like to be loved for doing it?
Randa is not a warm man. In four years as a board member then deputy chairman of Creditanstalt he didn't blend with the team that had run the bank for decades.
In January 1997, when he visited Creditanstalt again as its purchaser, there was no one still holding a torch for him. He was glad to kick out the old guard he'd never got on with and bring in some of his own, less colourful, more loyal lieutenants. But some loyal Creditanstalters have stayed, believing the bank had no future on its own, and affording Randa some respect for his sheer daring and political skill.
Randa would like to be better understood. He is not the sinister Harley-Davidson biker sometimes referred to in the press.