Johannesburg - Africa's largest mobile operator MTN on Wednesday announced that it had reshuffled its management team further amid plans to strengthen its strategy. The group said it decided to enhance its management and governance structures after it was slapped with a record fine for unregistered SIM cards in Nigeria.
The cellular giant, which operates across 22 countries and has 230 million subscribers in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, appointed Jens Schulte-Bockum as group chief operating officer, with effect from next January, following Jyoti Desai’s retirement.
The company said Schulte-Bockum had extensive operational experience in the mobile telecoms sector, as his last senior role was chief executive of Vodafone Germany between 2012 and 2015. “We expect Jens to bring extensive experience in the consumer business, as well as the area of large-scale transformation in a convergent operation,” the company said.
MTN also appointed Oliver Fortuin as the executive head of business enterprise with effective from March next year.
Oliver is currently the chief executive of BT Global Services’ sub-Saharan Africa, having previously held senior roles at IBM, HP and Lenovo. In his role as head of BT Global Services, Oliver was responsible for developing and selling enterprise solutions to multinationals in Africa.
“Oliver will greatly enhance MTN’s strategy in this area,” MTN said, adding that Bernice Samuels had re-joined as group executive of marketing from January after previously working as MTN South Africa’s chief marketing officer. Samuels also headed a similar role at FNB.
MTN Group’s executive chairman, Phuthuma Nhleko, said the changes were done to finalise the management aspect of a large scale transformation and operational review process. Hesaid he was confident that the appointments would place the group in good stead to capitalise on its many prospects and reach its full potential in a rapidly transforming and exciting sector.
“We have attracted individuals of high calibre and wide, relevant experience, to further enhance the existing management team, consistent with the anticipated trajectory of the group,” he said.
Read also: MTN makes senior appointments
MTN previously appointed Rob Shuter as the new group president and chief executive. Shuter was chief executive of the European Cluster at Vodafone Group and has extensive experience in telecoms and banking, having held senior management roles at Vodacom Group, Standard Bank and Nedbank. His appointment followed the resignation of Sifiso Dabengwa last year after troubles in Nigeria.
The company agreed to pay about $1.5 billion (R23.25 billion) over three years to settle the dispute, a major decrease on the original $5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect 5 million unregistered SIM card users set by the Nigerian regulator.
Other appointments included Paul Hanratty, whom the company described as “a veteran of Old Mutual”, and Stan Miller, who is currently working with Len Blavatnik in London and Capital Group in New York.
MTN shares rose 2.54 percent on the JSE yesterday to close at R114.33.