Goodbye to the big green, and Ye'llo MTN

After 16 years at Old Mutual, Ralph Mupita will be leaving "the big green" at the end of this month.

In assessing his long career, the Old Mutual Emerging Markets CEO says he's satisfied with the contribution he's made and it's time he moved on to a new challenge.

"You should always know when it's your time to move, do something different. When the MTN opening came along it gave me that opportunity for growth."

Mupita will be joining MTN as chief financial officer.

The move is unusual but Mupita maintains that his career trajectory has always been nonlinear, likening it to that of Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam.

"I always get asked to give an example of someone who had a similar background to me and I always say Tidjane Thiam. He's an engineering graduate but when he ran Prudential he first came in as CFO."

Mupita follows former Old Mutual Plc COO Paul Hanratty, who joined MTN in 2015 as a nonexecutive director. Mupita is also the latest recruit from the financial services sector, after Stephen van Coller of Barclays Africa joined MTN in September last year as vice-president of strategy, mergers and acquisitions.

This has prompted speculation that MTN is venturing further into financial services.

But Mupita is quick to point out that the bread and butter of telecommunications will predominantly revolve around infrastructure, network, and voice and data services on a pre- and post-paid basis.

"Certainly, financial services can be one of several links that one can put on top of this infrastructure. [But] to overemphasise it as the most important is to give it more attention than is needed."

The telecoms space, slightly faster paced than financial services, is an interesting one and Mupita appears excited by the prospects.

"I think it's the broader connectivity-related issues and artificial intelligence that will make telecoms exciting."

Apart from the convergence of financial services and telecommunications in technology and distribution, Mupita says his experience in dealing with regulatory changes in the financial services sector and the resultant pressure on profit margins will come in handy at MTN.

The result, says Mupita, is that telecommunications companies are coming under pressure from a variety of other sources, including competition and industry disruptors.

"That puts a massive focus on things like capital, efficiency and cost management. That's what we experienced in financial services."

Mupita will be one of the few chief financial officers of a JSE-listed company without a chartered accountancy qualification.

"In South Africa there is an expectation that CFOs are chartered accountants, but internationally it's not necessarily the case."

About 24% of the chief financial officers and financial directors of JSE-listed companies are not chartered accountants.

Though he cannot reveal details, it's no secret that several hurdles lie ahead of him. Mupita will have to keep a close eye on a number of difficulties facing MTN, the biggest being in Nigeria where it was fined for flouting regulations.

Now that the $1.7-billion (about R24-billion) fine is in the past, Mupita can look forward to focusing on executing the group's infrastructure growth plans, overseeing MTN's listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and, hopefully, less time steering the company out of the naughty corners of foreign governments.

Mupita leaves Old Mutual Emerging Markets, which he has headed for the past five years, amid the group's unbundling. During his tenure its customer base grew 13.3% to 10.7million, while funds under management grew 12.1%.

However, it hasn't all been plain sailing for Mupita and he counts Nigeria and Zimbabwe as the biggest challenges. The devaluation of the naira had a significant effect on the business, which was dealt a double blow when Nigerian authorities held back on bancassurance regulations Old Mutual Emerging Markets was expecting, which would have made operating in the country a lot easier.

In Zimbabwe, Mupita says the team running the business has been able to navigate all the "socioeconomic and sociopolitical challenges that are pretty mainstream in an economy like Zimbabwe's".

Mupita's departure means yet another black CEO leaving a prominent leadership position in a sector that has been slow to transform.

He says the problem becomes even more acute when you look at it from a gender perspective. The lack of women's representation at boardroom tables is disconcerting.

"The problem becomes even more acute when you look at the lack of black women. Where are the black, female executives?"

Of the 13 listed financial services firms in the JSE top 100, 11 are run by men and only two - Standard Bank and Liberty - have black CEOs. Barclays Africa and Santam are the only female-led companies. There are no black female CEOs in the top 100, although MMI comes close with the only black woman chief financial officer among the 13 companies in the financial services sector.

Mupita believes that the problem of transformation should be tackled on a structural level.

"We must deal with it on a structural level and look at what needs to be done to have higher levels of executive representation and, ultimately, broader representation."

tsamelad@sundaytimes.co.za