SA's largest cellular company, Vodacom, has yet to announce who will take over from Shameel Joosub when he leaves Vodacom SA to head up Vodafone Spain at the end of next week.
The company isn't commenting on where it is in the process of trying to find a replacement for its MD, or what contingency plans it has to keep its biggest money-spinner running smoothly.
Whoever takes over from Joosub will have large shoes to fill. Vodacom SA is the biggest network in the country, with 25.3 million subscribers, giving it the lion's share of the market with about 49% of all subscribers.
The unit is also Vodacom's largest, accounting for R25.6 billion of the group's total revenue of R29.5 billion in the first half of the year.
Joosub, who joined Vodacom when it was launched in 1994, is viewed as having been a “key architect in growing the business”. He started as an accounting clerk before being promoted to head up the company's local commercial arm in 2000.
Between 2000 and 2005, Joosub was responsible for increasing Vodacom's South African subscriber base from 2.5 million to almost nine million, says Vodacom. He was promoted to MD of Vodacom SA in 2005, when the company had 12.8 million customers in SA, a number that has since almost doubled.
No news
In December last year, Vodacom said Joosub was being promoted to head up Vodafone Spain. He will leave the company and step down from the board next Thursday.
Moyo added the company will “make an announcement as soon as possible and in the meantime concentrate on our plans to ensure a smooth transition”. Meanwhile, says Vodacom, “it'll be business as usual until we appoint the new MD for SA”.
Group CEO Pieter Uys previously said the company has a “medium-list” of candidates and is interviewing for the position. Last month, he hoped to have a “shorter list” by the next board meeting, which is before the company's financial year-end at the end of this month.
Key position
Denis Smit, MD of BMI-TechKnowledge, says the Vodacom SA MD position is “significant”, because of the size of the unit. He expects Vodafone, which has a controlling stake in Vodacom, to have a say in who gets appointed.
Smit adds that whoever takes over from Joosub doesn't have to come from within the telecoms sector, as the company has “hoards” of experienced operational staff. However, he would prefer to see someone appointed from within the industry.
Vodacom could announce the new MD when it rolls out its new-look branding and management structure, says Smit. The company is widely expected to rebrand within the next few weeks, to have the same look and feel as parent company Vodafone.
The operator earlier this week said there had been some senior-level restructuring at its local operations, which resulted in chief commercial officer Romeo Kumalo reporting into the group structure instead of the South African unit after his role was enlarged. Kumalo had been named as a possible successor to Joosub.
WWW Strategy MD Steven Ambrose points out that there is a huge skills shortage in the telecoms sector. He notes that there aren't enough suitably qualified candidates out there to devise strategies in the fast-moving industry.
Ambrose says the telecoms sector in general hasn't spent enough time and energy on succession planning, which could be the result of the sector simply moving too fast to grow people into top positions, and not because of a lack of will.
There are “no obvious choices” to replace Joosub, adds Ambrose. He says if the company was going to have a handover period to train a new MD, it should have already appointed Joosub's successor.
It will be a real challenge replacing Joosub, says Ambrose.
He believes the CEO position should be more strategic than operational, and Vodacom SA does not need someone with entrepreneurial flair, but rather a leader who can maintain its position and execute strategy.
Vodacom is likely to make an appointment that will align its strategy with that of parent company Vodafone, says Ambrose, and won't rush to make an announcement as the unit's management team will “take up the slack” in the short-term.
However, Irnest Kaplan, MD of Kaplan Equity Analysts, previously pointed out that Vodacom seems to be running out of room to grow as its operations are mostly constrained in SA, which already has a saturated voice market.
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