{"id":348801,"date":"2019-10-24T17:08:16","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T15:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=348801"},"modified":"2019-10-24T17:08:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T15:08:16","slug":"blue-labels-levy-brothers-step-down-from-cell-c-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/348801\/blue-labels-levy-brothers-step-down-from-cell-c-board\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Label&#8217;s Levy brothers step down from Cell C board"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cell C has announced changes to its board, including the appointment of a new chairman and member representatives from shareholders Blue Label Telecoms and Net1.<\/p>\n<p>Existing Cell C board member, Joe Mthimunye will take over as non-executive chairman effective 20 November 2019, replacing outgoing chairman, Kuben Pillay.<\/p>\n<p>Pillay has agreed to remain in the position until a handover process has been concluded, Cell C said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Mthimunye\u2019s appointment, Blue Label Telecoms and Net1 have nominated new directors as shareholder representatives on the Cell C Board.<\/p>\n<p>Gary Harlow and Jerry Vilakazi will replace Brett Levy and Mark Levy as the Blue Label Telecoms representatives, while Paul Edwards will replace Herman Kotze on behalf of Net1.<\/p>\n<p>The Cell C Board comprise the following directors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Joe Mthimunye, Non-Executive Chairman (effective 20 November 2019)<\/li>\n<li>Douglas Craigie Stevenson, CEO<\/li>\n<li>Zaf Mahomed, CFO<\/li>\n<li>Lindiwe Mthimunye, Independent Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<li>Alex Smith, Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<li>Gary Harlow, Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<li>Jerry Vilakazi, Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<li>Larry Nestadt, Deputy Chairman, Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<li>Paul Edwards, Non-Executive Director<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Bad investment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blue Label Telecom co-chief executive officer Brett Levy recently admitted that the company\u2019s investment into Cell C was a bad move for the group, but he remains hopeful that the operator can turn things around as it hunts for a new equity partner.<\/p>\n<p>After delaying its results for a number of weeks, Blue Label published its<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/343007\/blue-label-counts-the-cost-of-cell-c-losses\/\">\u00a0full year results<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0at the end of September, reporting a decline in earnings for the year ended May 2019, including a 3% drop in group revenue to R25.9 billion as losses incurred by Cell C weighed.<\/p>\n<p>Cell C\u2019s losses, which totalled\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/343033\/cell-c-reports-massive-r8-billion-loss\/\">R8 billion<\/a><\/strong>, amounted to R3.6 billion for Blue Label directly, as the company has a 45% stake in the operator.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Blue Label reported a headline loss of 312.49 cents per share, and a core headline loss of 304.77 cents per share.<\/p>\n<p>Levy said that the core of Blue Label\u2019s business has done really well \u2013 but where the company would have usually seen the benefit of these core operations, it has now seen the opposite due to Cell C.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately it has been a bad (investment). But we\u2019ve drawn a line in the sand now, and hopefully we can turn it around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/346180\/cell-c-was-a-bad-investment-blue-label\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Cell C was a bad investment: Blue Label<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cell C has announced changes to its board, including the appointment of a new chairman and member representatives from shareholders Blue Label Telecoms and Net1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":274313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[42,26],"class_list":["post-348801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-cell-c","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348811,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348801\/revisions\/348811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}