Old Mutual, Moyo public row claims its first board member
The fight between Peter Moyo and the Old Mutual board on Thursday claimed its first casualty, Pinky Moholi.
Moholi, one of the 14 Old Mutual directors who fired CEO Peter Moyo, has resigned with immediate effect from the insurer’s board after serving on it for seven years.
Moholi is a former CEO of telecoms group Telkom.
Moholi was one of the few board members who tried to put out the fire at the insurer by meeting journalists in August to give the board’s side of the story.
The insurer said she resigned for personal reasons.
In a statement posted on the Stock Exchange News Service, Old Mutual said: “The chairman and the board expressed their deepest appreciation for Ms Moholi’s significant contribution to the success of the company.
“Ms Moholi wished the board all the best during this difficult time,” said the group.
The resignation of Moholi, who was an independent nonexecutive director as well as the chair of the insurer’s remuneration committee, comes at a time when the Old Mutual board is facing mounting pressure to put an end to its bruising public dispute with Moyo, who was fired in June and has since won two reinstatement orders in the high court in Johannesburg.
It also comes after a week in which board chair Trevor Manuel came under increased public scrutiny for taking a swipe at the Johannesburg judge Brian Mashile for the two court rulings.
Many have interpreted Manuel’s now retracted utterance — describing Mashile as “a single individual who happens to wear a robe ”— as reflecting the Old Mutual board’s attitude towards the rule of law.
Moholi is also among individuals who are cited in Part B of Moyo’s legal challenge in which he says he wants the court to declare all of the insurer’s directors delinquent.
Speaking to Business Day in August, Moholi said that Moyo’s Part B had taken her by surprise, but still lauded the axed CEO for being talented and experienced.
She said that it was not an easy decision for the board to let him go, but it was unanimous that it had lost trust and confidence in him.
“It’s still a painful process because I held Peter in high regard. We were very supportive of his appointment to Old Mutual because he comes with experience, and we are disappointed at how things turned out,” said Moholi at the time.
Moholi maintained that the board was united.
Moholi was the first to publicly suggest that if there were any prospects to negotiate a settlement with Moyo, the board would welcome that.