Group Five appoints Mosai as CEO
Group Five has appointed interim CEO Themba Mosai as CEO three months after the construction and engineering group suddenly announced in late February that then CEO Eric Vemer would “be leaving … in the next few weeks”.
Mosai’s confirmation comes after Allan Gray said last week it had asked for the board to be reconstituted after it had “lost faith” in it.
The fund manager said clients held 25% of the group. It wanted to call an extraordinary general meeting after what Group Five said was “a disagreement on the future direction of the company”.
Meanwhile, Kushil Maharaj has been appointed group executive committee (exco) member of investments and concessions. This operation develops and operates toll roads in SA, Zimbabwe, Hungary and Poland.
“I look forward to working with the board and the highly competent management team in place. Our immediate priorities are to deliver stakeholder value by right-sizing our construction business, effectively managing risk, executing on the voluntary rebuild programme [with government] and leveraging our relationship with Aberdeen Infrastructure Fund to expand our concessions business,” Mosai said.
Group Five announced earlier a final deal under which Aberdeen Infrastructure Funds would buy a 49.99% interest in the Intertoll Europe underlying public-private-partnership project investment portfolio, which houses its key European investment and concession assets for about €43m in cash.
Andrew Lapping, a director at Allan Gray, said earlier that the fund manager had become concerned because of a number of
changes. “A lot of people have suddenly left the company — executives and directors.”
Lapping said he had been unable to get “a clear understanding of the situation”.
In May, the group provided a restructuring update. It said Mosai had made “meaningful changes since his appointment at the beginning of March 2017”. These were aimed at unlocking shareholder value and tackling the unprofitable engineering and construction cluster.
Mosai has been with Group Five for more than 13 years, three of them on the exco. The group said he had been instrumental in the growth of its developments business, identifying opportunities in transport, energy and real estate.