{"id":46785,"date":"2013-09-29T09:15:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T07:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=46785"},"modified":"2013-09-29T09:40:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T07:40:00","slug":"telkom-shifts-gear-in-turnaround-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/46785\/telkom-shifts-gear-in-turnaround-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Telkom shifts gear in turnaround: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Telkom has managed to placate its stakeholders – including goverment, directors and management – and has got them on board with the company’s turnaround strategy, the Sunday Times reported.<\/p>\n

Despite brief drama involving the re-election of former Telkom chairman Jeff Molobela, Telkom’s AGM on Friday (27 September) passed with little controversy.<\/p>\n

According to the Sunday Times, Telkom’s board won over shareholders with last minute changes made to its resolutions – which were published on Thursday, a day before the meeting.<\/p>\n

The new resolutions included, amongst others, the authority to purchase back a maximum of 10% of Telkom shares if needs be, as well as the authority to provide financial support to Telkom employees \u2013 both in order to implement an employee reward share scheme.<\/p>\n

These changes were made to ensure \u201cgreater alignment between shareholders, the board and management\u201d, according to Telkom chairman Jabu Mabuza.<\/p>\n

Despite smooth sailing compared to last year’s AGM, where then-minister of communications, Dina Pule, ploughed into the workings of the company and made significant changes, this year’s AGM wasn’t without a bit of drama.<\/p>\n

Former Telkom chairman, Jeff Molobela made himself unavailable for re-election to the board after fellow board members “diplomatically” asked shareholders not to re-elect him.<\/p>\n

According to the report, shareholders also called out the executive remuneration which did not match the performance of the company.<\/p>\n

Non-executive directors elected to not take an increase for the coming year, in order to contain costs.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff<\/a>

Jeff Molobela<\/p><\/div>\n

Still to come<\/h3>\n

Telkom still faces challenges on two fronts, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Firstly, CEO Sipho Maseko is preparing to fight local-loop unbundling (opening up the “last mile” of the network that links customers to their nearest exchange) – which the CEO reportedly views as giving competitors a \u201cfree ride\u201d on investments made by Telkom.<\/p>\n

Secondly, Maseko is looking at ways to stop Telkom Mobile from sinking, accoring to the report.<\/p>\n

Telkom Mobile made a loss of R1.7 billion in the last financial year, and currently has only 1.5 million subscribers – a tiny percentage compared to other mobile operators in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Maseko plans to “de-risk” the company and limit the “intensity of what it costs [Telkom]” to run it. However no firm strategy to do so has been decided.<\/p>\n

Plans would be announced in November.<\/p>\n

More news on Telkom<\/h3>\n

Telkom uncaps multimedia Internet use<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

How Telkom plans to cut costs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Telkom board seeks tighter control<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Telkom is no darling: analyst<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Telkom: time to stop subsidising Vodacom, MTN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telkom has managed to placate its stakeholders – including goverment, directors and management – and has got them on board with the company’s turnaround strategy, the Sunday Times reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[2964,26,6750,2414,65,1075],"class_list":["post-46785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-agm","tag-headline","tag-jeff-molobela","tag-sipho-maseko","tag-telkom","tag-telkom-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46785","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=46785"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46791,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46785\/revisions\/46791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}