Today is the first working day of Rob Shuter, the new Group CEO and President of MTN. He takes over from interim executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko. Nhleko took over as executive chair in an interim capacity in early November 2015 after former group CEO Sifiso Dabengwa resigned from the post.
Until last year, Shuter was the CEO of the Europe cluster at Vodafone and has extensive experience in telecoms and banking having held senior management roles at Vodacom Group, Standard Bank and Nedbank prior to joining Vodafone Group.
Rob was named the Group CEO after the successful resolution of the Nigerian dispute and the review of the company’s governance and management structures in accordance with its
undertaking to do so. The telecoms giant had stated that the appointment of new executives and the expansion of the roles of others, together with the appointment of additional non-executive directors, details of which are set out hereunder, will achieve the objective of strengthening management, enhancing governance and aiding strategy in the Group.
It is expected that he will bring experience and new insights to the CEO role having had many years in the telecoms sector both in Africa and Europe as well as in banking where his expertise will help as MTN continues to develop its new business strategy.
Rob has a huge task to attend to as he will try to steer the company out of the dismal performance in 2016 which it said was “the most challenging year in the company’s 22-year history”. However, despite the difficulties, MTN said it began to show encouraging first signs of a turnaround.
