CARVING UP EMPIR AN

Imperial Holdings will be no more if Mark Lamberti meets what is probably his greatest challenge: to cleave the company as we know it today, into two distinct, separately listed businesses of motor retail and logistics. But is it a split that makes sense?

e’ve got a second chance, and I don’t think we’ll get a third,” says Mark Lamberti about the “Cyril Spring” — the wave of economic optimism that has enveloped SA since former president Jacob Zuma was deposed three weeks ago and replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa. Lamberti is wellplaced to make such a diagnosis on how precarious SA’S economic recovery will be.

His most obvious claim to fame is that he’s the CEO of the sixth-largest company in SA by revenue — logistics giant Imperial, which clocked up R119bn in sales last year in 33 countries, operating thousands of supply-chain routes, car rental outlets, and importing cars and vehicle parts. It is one of the 30 largest logistics companies in the world.

But Lamberti is also one of SA’S most outspoken CEOS and has spent the past few years raging against the creeping dissolution of ethics.

That’s why, last month, Ramaphosa’s new government picked him to be a nonexecutive director among those mandated to fix electricity utility Eskom, perhaps SA’S most corruption-frayed and broken stateowned company.

Lamberti is blunt about the role business has to play in helping SA climb out of a swamp created by nine years of the Zuma administration.

“To the extent that we failed to play a part in the past 23 years, or were not sufficiently forthcoming, that’s going to have to change — now,” he says.

Lamberti (67) remains as idealistic (critics might say naive) as he was in 1978 when, as a 28-year-old, he wrote his own “management manifesto” for how he wanted to run companies one day. Today, he has no illusions about how deep the rot ran under Zuma.

“SA has fundamental structural problems: we have too many unemployed, unemployable people and that is not going to go away in a year or two or three.”

Still, he says, Ramaphosa’s early walk — extolling a need for integrity and an end to corruption — has matched his talk. This week, Ramaphosa axed 10 of the Zuma-era deadbeats from his cabinet, including Mosebenzi Zwane, Faith Muthambi, David Mahlobo, David Des van Rooyen and Lynne Brown.

Eskom’s board, hitherto dominated by Gupta lackeys, was overhauled. Besides Lamberti, Eskom’s new CEO is Phakamani Hadebe (former Land Bank chief), while Business Unity SA’S Mr Fix-it, Jabu Mabuza, is chairman.

Lamberti described his appointment to Eskom as a “call to service”. It’s no exaggeration: corruption and waste at Eskom were perhaps the biggest risk to SA’S balance sheet, given its R540bn debt burden, backed by R350bn in government guarantees.

“The call came from people whom I respect highly and whom I would like to assist in solving some of the problems that we face,” Lamberti adds.

He says the way government runs state-owned companies needs a rethink. “The state-owned entity problem is a failure of [everyone] to delineate the role of government as shareholder, the role of the board, and the role of management.”

There is a sense, however, that corporate SA may be viewing Ramaphosa through rose-tinted glasses and ignoring potentially ruinous economic policies, such as land expropriation without compensation.

Lamberti takes a nuanced view. He says the days of CEOS focusing myopically on shareholder returns won’t cut it anymore. Trade-offs must be made.

“I simply do not believe we are here to satisfy shareholders alone and my logic is simple: any stake-

What it means: Lamberti has been selling companies that ‘don’t belong in the group’