COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Momentum appoints SA's first woman CEO

Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (MMH) has announced Jeanette Marais as its new CEO, starting 1 August. Marais will be the first woman CEO of a large, listed life insurer in South Africa.

Her appointment comes almost a year after the only other woman CEO in the insurance sector, Lizé Lambrechts, retired in July 2022. But Lambrechts, who once headed Sanlam's biggest business unit, Sanlam Personal Finance, only ascended to the highest seat when she moved to Santam, the group's short-term insurance arm.

Marais will succeed Hillie Meyer, who was appointed as a fixer in 2018, to help MMH get its groove back, as it was on a downward slide a few years after the merger of Momentum and Metropolitan. Meyer will retire on 30 September. He was on a fixed five-year contract since February 2018, replacing the group's then long-standing CEO Nicolaas Kruger.

In their first year, Meyer and Marais, who were swiftly brought back to their former home from other companies as CEO and deputy CEO, reported the worst financials MMH had ever seen, as earnings tanked 12%. But the worst performance was the new business margin, which shrank to just 0.7%, meaning that the insurer was barely making a profit on newly sold policies. Meanwhile, peers like Sanlam boasted margins of more than 2%.

Within five years, the group grew its full-year normalised headline earnings from R2.8 billion, when the pair reported its first results in 2018, to R4.4 billion at the end of June 2022, despite the Covid-19 disruptions. Meyer even boasted that they've finally got their mojo back.-Fin24

Sibanye shareholders rebel against exec pay

Sibanye-Stillwater shareholders holding almost half of the company's shares have demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the generous pay packages dished out to the mining company's executives, including a R190 million payday for its CEO, Neal Froneman.

At the company's AGM on Friday, shareholders holding 47.92% of company stock voted down Sibanye's remuneration implementation report while 52.71% voted in favour of it.

When shareholders holding more than 25% of shares vote against such a non-binding advisory vote, companies are required by the JSE listing requirements – in line with the King Code on corporate governance – to engage with shareholders over their concerns.

This was the case last year too when just over 26% of shareholders voted against executive pay packages, which included Froneman's jaw-dropping R300 million remuneration package.

Sibanye's head of investor relations and corporate affairs, James Wellsted, said the remuneration questions posed by shareholders at Friday's AGM sought to understand how the remuneration works.-Fin24

Amazon could be launched in SA

The South African launch of the online retailer Amazon may be getting closer, as details of two of its potential distributions sites appear to have been leaked online.

This followed another leak, exposed by Business Insider last year, of a plan to launch its online marketplace and other services in South Africa in 2023. Amazon has not confirmed the plan.

The company started advertising key positions last year. Local managers were sought to “recruit and launch online sellers on Amazon's Marketplace".

Online news site mybroadband.co.za reported on Friday that a user of the social network Reddit inadvertently came across a document published on Amazon's Carrier Central web portal, which appears to show that the group intended to have "at least one fulfilment centre in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town.

Two addresses are mentioned: one in the Eastport Logistics Park near Kempton Park, Johannesburg and the other in Montague Garden City, Cape Town.

Amazon declined to comment about the properties, staff appointments and the extent of its plans for South Africa.

Steve Brown, CEO of real estate investment trust Fortress, confirmed that the JSE-listed group owned most of properties in the Eastport Logistics Park, but also declined to comment.-Fin24

PIC to back bid to own Telkom

Africa’s largest asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), is backing a possible bid led by the former chief executive of Telkom for a 35% stake in South Africa’s third-biggest mobile phone company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The PIC, which manages more than R2.5 trillionin assets, is in talks to team up with the Sipho Maseko’s investment vehicle Afrifund and Mauritius-based Axian Telecom in a potential offer for the stake in the partly state-owned company, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The 35% stake could also be combined with the PIC’s current shareholding to boost the overall holding of the group, they said.

The talks are ongoing and details of a possible offer could change, the people said. Telkom said the company was in a closed period, and would update the market on June 13 on its strategy to unlock value. The PIC and Axian Telecom did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Afrifund’s Maseko declined to comment on the matter.

There is also a possibility that the group would try to buy Telkom’s fiber and tower units, and combine them with Axian’s assets to create an African-focused infrastructure company, said the people. Such an agreement would further merge the mobile businesses of the two firms, and Telkom’s BCX unit could be sold, said the people. –Fin24