‘Pinky Moholi to be made Telkom's CEO’

Nombulelo “Pinky” Moholi will be appointed as the new Telkom group CEO as she has the approval of both the telecommunications group's board and Cabinet, according to a senior government source.

The source says an announcement by Telkom should be published on the JSE's Stock Exchange News Service during the course of next week.

Moholi (50) had been widely tipped as the front-runner for the helmsman position at Telkom after former CEO Reuben September, with former chief financial officer Peter Nelson, left last June ahead of his planned exit date of November 2010.

Her appointment will end months of a highly contested, but closely guarded, process that was delayed by the need to reconstitute the Telkom board, which was done in March with the appointment of Lazarus Zim as nonexecutive chairman.

While Telkom is a listed company, the government, through its direct shareholding of 38.4%, has a major say in the appointment of key directorships, including that of group CEO.

Although the “golden” share rights expired on March 5, Communications Minister Roy Padayachie has indicated his intention that the government should retain these rights due to Telkom's strategic role in the economy.

Acting group CEO Jeffery Hedberg took over from Reuben September in June after the latter suddenly left. Hedberg, who headed up Telkom's troubled Nigerian operation Multilinks, has consistently said he would not extend his stay after the expiry of his contract in April.

Moholi, a qualified engineer, first joined Telkom in 1994 and then left 11 years later following what many have described as a purge that included Oupa Magashula, now the SA Revenue Service's commissioner. She joined Nedbank for three years before returning to Telkom to head up its South African business unit.

“What is exciting for government is that Pinky will be the first black women to head up a listed telecommunications company and only the second to head up a major listed corporation,” the government source said.

The only other known black woman to head up a major JSE-listed company is Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita, the CEO of steel producer AcelorMittal, who, incidently, began her career in the information and communications technology sector.

While Moholi has the credentials that are acceptable to Cabinet and the Telkom board, it will take a lot of work by her and whoever her new chief financial officer is to get investor confidence back on track.

Irnest Kaplan, MD of Kaplan Equity Analysts, said he would not recommend Telkom as a “buy” until any new CEO and chief financial officer had had time to work out a new group strategy.

“They will have to wrap up Telkom's various Africa businesses, look at its core South African business and then they will have to really focus Telkom on the data side of the business, which the group hasn't really achieved,” he said.

Kaplan said Telkom's major rivals are the mobile operators Vodacom, MTN and Cell C, who have been “chomping away with fixed-to-mobile substitution as people have been replacing their landlines with cellular phones”.

He said the mobile operators had also been steadily expanding their fixed-line deployments, thus eating into Telkom's core.

Telkom was trading at 34.75, down 1%, at 16:00. - I-Net Bridge