{"id":39175,"date":"2013-06-02T08:34:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T06:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=39175"},"modified":"2013-06-03T09:07:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T07:07:54","slug":"mtns-new-chairman-raises-eyebrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/39175\/mtns-new-chairman-raises-eyebrows\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN’s new chairman raises eyebrows"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN<\/a> has come under fire for its decision to appoint former CEO Phuthuma Nhleko<\/a> as its new chairman – a move that goes against the King Code, amongst other concerns, the Sunday Times reports.<\/p>\n

The King Code states that a CEO should not become chairman until 3 years have lapsed since his departure, and that the board “should elect a chairman of the board who is an independent non-executive director”.<\/p>\n

Quite the opposite, Nhleko, who stepped down as MTN CEO only two years ago, still owns shares in the operator and is thus not independent.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the move to place Nhleko as chairman on the company, has raised many eyebrows from governance experts.<\/p>\n

Experts raise concern over how quickly Nhleko was appointed after Cyril Ramaphosa<\/a> left the position earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Nhleko too close to management?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another concern raised is that Nhleko may be a little too close to management, and such a position would upset the balance of power at the company.<\/p>\n

Spiwe Chireka<\/a>, program manager of Telecoms at the\u00a0IDC<\/a>, told BusinessTech that, while Nhleko\u2019s appointment is a positive one for the group, it may well be difficult for him to avoid getting into the everyday operations of the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a possibility that the lines could become blurred between chairman and CEO,\u201d Chireka said, noting that in many instances, chairmen are appointed with very little knowledge about the industry in which a particular company operates in.<\/p>\n

Nadim Mohamed<\/a>, investment analyst and partner at\u00a0First Avenue Investment Management<\/a>, said that Nhleko is no stranger to being a board member only, since his resignation from MTN.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Nhleko is a good appointment and has extensive experience in telecoms within African and emerging markets.\u00a0I think he will settle well into the chairman role as he has been on a few boards such as Anglo American over the past two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkcell claims<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other questions of neutrality were raised, and on top of everything, the fact that Nhleko was CEO at the time Turkcell<\/a> claimed MTN was involved with corruption in Iran.<\/p>\n

As part of the case, former Iranian head, Chris Kilowan<\/a> claimed that Nhleko authorised bribes to former South African ambassador, Yusuf Saloojee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, MTN director, Alan van Biljon<\/a> fluffed the claims, saying that “if historical issues such as this arose in future, Nhleko would simply have to recuse himself from discussion and he (Van Bijon) would take over.”<\/p>\n

MTN’s Hoffmann committee, which investigated the case, gave MTN and Nhleko the all-clear, and Turkcell has since withdrawn its case against MTN.<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

Analysts question MTN leadership<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Phuthuma Nhleko rejoins MTN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN SA gets new CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN has come under fire for its decision to appoint former CEO Phuthuma Nhleko as its new chairman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28,2181,1292],"class_list":["post-39175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-phuthuma-nhleko","tag-turkcell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39175","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=39175"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39179,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39175\/revisions\/39179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}