Absa appoints ex-deputy Sarb governor as CEO
Absa Group appointed former South African central bank deputy governor Daniel Mminele as chief executive officer, in the midst of a turnaround strategy to expand in Africa and claw back market share.
Mminele, 54, will begin on 15 January, Absa said yesterday. The company has been led by another ex-regulator, Rene van Wyk, since February. Mminele joins after a six-month cooling-off period since leaving the South African Reserve Bank at the end of June.
Absa has been without a permanent CEO since Maria Ramos quit after leading the split from the lender’s former parent, Barclays. Ramos had started a strategic revamp to regain market share Absa lost in SA while it was under the control of the British bank. It’s also seeking to grow revenue on the rest of the continent faster than its Johannesburg-based peers.
The new CEO will first have to tackle key information-technology projects before pushing ahead with full force on Absa’s growth ambitions, Jan Meintjes, a portfolio manager at Cape Town-based Denker Capital, said by phone.
“They need to stay on top of that from a cost and business impact point of view,” he said.
“He needs to strike that balance between getting these things finished and then try and get on the front foot to actually bring the bank in various areas into a position where it can compete effectively.”
Mminele becomes the first black CEO of Absa and only the third black person to take the helm of one of the country’s four biggest banks.
Sim Tshabalala heads Standard Bank Group, the continent’s largest lender, while Sizwe Nxasana led FirstRand until 2015.
The ANC has been pushing to increase the participation of black people in the economy since 1994, with the top leadership of listed companies still dominated by whites.
Mminele was responsible for financial markets and international economic relations at the central bank, where he served two five-year terms as deputy governor.
Van Wyk will step down as CEO on 14 January and will help with the handover until 31 January, before rejoining Absa’s board as a nonexecutive director after a sixmonth cooling-off period.
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