Huge Group restructures board

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 13 Nov 2008

AltX-listed Huge Group has conducted a major restructuring of its board of directors, in order to streamline management functions and operations.

Current CEO Anton Potgieter has been appointed executive chairman, and hands over the reins to current financial director James Herbst. In turn, Potgieter takes over from previous non-executive chairman Chief Lediga.

Potgieter was MD of TelePassport for 14 years and subsequently held the position as CEO of the Huge Group for more than a year, since its listing in August 2007. Herbst was previously financial director, and responsible for the listing of DataPro (now Vox Telecom). He has held the position of group financial director at Huge Group since the company's listing.

Potgieter says the decision to restructure came from the board wanting to have the right management in place. He claims Herbst will be committed to mobile subsidiaries, while he will be championing the brand of the Huge Group to investors.

“The new structure is going to allow us to focus more on our primary responsibilities by freeing more of the Huge Group so as we grow, we are ready for it. We currently have strategic growth plans in place,” says Potgieter.

According to him, the Huge Group's commitment to succession planning has also played a critical part in its decision to restructure its board.

“We feel there is a strong argument for the services of a full-time chairperson who can champion the profile of the company with all stakeholders in the market, especially in the case of a newly-listed company,” says Potgieter.

Fighting MTN

“As I have assumed responsibility for this executive role, under the portfolio of group CEO, this has meant the responsibilities of group CEO have risked neglect. It was, therefore, important for us to align accountability with responsibility and hence the natural fit of moving to an executive chairman position and appointing James Herbst as the group CEO,” says Potgieter.

He adds that Huge Group plans to invest in a number of acquisitions and noted the new appointments were implemented in order to manage them.

One such potential acquisition is the company's bid to take a 59% stake in iTalk Cellular, which is being probed by the Competition Commission, after being contested by MTN.

Huge Group initially successfully bid for the stake in December, but MTN subsequently decided to exercise its pre-emptive rights over the stake and challenged the acquisition. MTN already owns part of the mobile content and service provider.

Potgieter says: “We are holding thumbs that MTN will not be allowed to buy into iTalk Cellular. The Competition Commission has had this case for 75 days, which is uncommon in a case like this. Huge Group has been treading water to sign an acquisition deal with iTalk Cellular. But we can only take control once the Competition Commission has given us the recommendation.”

The company's interim results showed revenue growth of 25% for six months ending 31 August 2008, compared with last year's results.

Other recent board appointments include Stephen Tredoux (previous executive GM of sales at MTN), Rajen Pillay (previous operations director of Orion Telecom, a Vox Telecom company), Don Tredoux (previous founder of Orion Telecom), Ken Jarvis (previous CIO at SARS), and Amil De Moura (previous project executive at IBM).

* Should MTN be successful in securing the iTalk Cellular buy, would that adversely affect competition in the telecoms space? Give us your opinion via our feedback facility.