MTN gets new COO

The shake-up of top management at MTN continues. The group has hired Jens Schulte-Bockum as chief operating officer, replacing Jyoti Desai, who is retiring.

The group has also announced it is hiring BT Global Services sub-Saharan Africa CEO Oliver Fortuin as executive head of business enterprise and Bernice Samuels as group executive of marketing. Schulte-Bockum will assume the position of group COO effective January 16, 2017. He was CEO of Vodafone Germany between 2012 and 2015.

“We expect Jens to bring extensive experience in the consumer business, as well as the area of large-scale transformation in a convergent operation,” MTN said.

Fortuin will join MTN on March 1 2017 from BT Global Services. He has decades of ICT sector experience at companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo.

Samuels, meanwhile, is a familiar face at MTN. She was previously chief marketing officer at MTN South Africa, prior to assuming a similar role at FNB. She was later named executive director of strategy and business development at SABMiller in South Africa.

“These appointments bring to finality the management aspect of a large-scale transformation and operational review process,” said MTN interim executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko.

This article was first published on TechCentral