JSE-listed multinational, Spescom has announced the appointment of Walter Kansteiner III as an independent non-executive director to the board of Spescom Limited, with effect from 5 April 2004.
US-based Kansteiner recently vacated the post of the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, reporting directly to Colin Powell.
He is now a senior partner of the Scowcroft Group, of which he was a founding principal. This company undertakes political risk and strategic consulting projects to multinational clients and is based in Washington DC, USA.
Kansteiner boasts over 20 years experience with African and emerging market business issues. He has acted in an advisory capacity to corporations on a wide range of mergers, acquisitions and privatisation throughout Africa involving, among others, the telecommunications sector. In this regard, Kansteiner recently advised the buy side on the $1.3 billion privatisation of Telkom SA Limited, the largest privatisation in Africa to date.
In addition to his business experience in emerging markets, Kansteiner served in the US government as director of African affairs on the National Security Council staff. He has also functioned as the Africa specialist on the Secretary's Policy Planning staff, as well as with the US Department of Defence as a member of the strategic minerals task force.
Kansteiner holds graduate degrees in international economics and ethics from American University and Virginia Theological Seminary respectively. He is also the author of "South Africa: Revolution or Reconciliation".
According to Spescom CEO, Tony Farah, Kansteiner's appointment is in line with Spescom's globalisation initiative.
"The US market is a primary target for Spescom's proprietary information content management software products. The appointment of a high level US-based representative, particularly one with the experience and acumen of Walter Kansteiner, will serve to augment our drive into tough highly competitive American markets."
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Spescom is a multinational technology innovator with direct operations in the US, UK and SA.
The group is publicly listed on the JSE Securities Exchange SA (Spescom Ltd), and on the NASDAQ OTCBB : SPCO (Spescom Software Inc).
Spescom addresses the information and communications technology market providing both products and solutions to connect to the network economy, as well as enterprise software to manage information and knowledge.
Specifically, Spescom provides solutions in the areas of access network; enterprise information management; multimedia transaction recording; broadcast; customer contact centres; and test and measurement.
Spescom markets its products worldwide through appointed partners and distributors under the eB brand for its enterprise software, and the DataVoice brand for its multimedia transaction recording solutions.
Spescom's global customer base consists of multinational organisations including leading enterprises in the utilities, telecommunications, transportation, financial, banking and insurance sectors.
Worldwide, customers include Siemens, British Telecoms, Network Rail (formerly Railtrack), Lloyds of London, Barclays Bank, Abbey National Bank, WH Smith, Caterpillar, Bechtel, AmerenUE, Entergy, Bombardier, Ocean Energy, Sempra Energy, Telkom, SABC, Old Mutual, Eskom, Transnet and First National Bank.
For more information on Spescom, please visit www.spescomsoftware.com and www.spescom.com.
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