BUSINESS OF UNITEL

DOS SANTOS CHOSEN FOR BOARD

AFRICA’S richest woman secured a fresh mandate as a board member of Angola’s biggest telecoms company when shareholders this week met to discuss corporate governance in the wake of legal action by one of the firm’s biggest investors. The meeting at Unitel, in which Isabel dos Santos owns a 25 percent stake and has been chairperson, came after an arbitration court ruled that Brazilian telecoms company Oi was entitled to receive $654 million (R9.3 billion) from other shareholders. The court said they violated several clauses of an agreement among Unitel shareholders and Oi didn’t receive dividends it was owed. Angolan state-owned oil company Sonangol, which owns a 25 percent stake, has repeatedly said it wants a new board at Unitel, while Oi has publicly expressed its disapproval with management for withholding the dividends. Unitel shareholders unanimously elected Isabel dos Santos and four other members to the board of the company. Miguel Geraldes, a former senior consultant at Huawei Technologies in South Africa, will replace Antony Dolton as general director of Unitel. The new board will take office on May 6 and elect a new chairperson, according to Unitel, which didn’t indicate in its statement who is likely to be chosen. The daughter of former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Isabel amassed a fortune during her father’s almost fourdecade rule and has an estimated net worth of about $2 billion, according to Bloomberg. I Bloomberg