Pretoria-based Brainware has announced that JC van Niekerk, currently the interim MD of Sita, will join the company as CEO. Sita, the state IT agency, was recently formed as a limited company with the goal of providing centralised IT services to government departments.
Van Niekerk will officially take the reigns on 1 July, but already has close contact with Brainware and will meet the investment community at the beginning of May.
Brainware has described the appointment as a coup, saying Van Niekerk is the ideal person to lead the company through the next phase of its development, as it plans to move to the main board of the JSE from its current place in the venture capital sector. Piet den Boer, Brainware chairman, says previous CEO Kobus Louw stepped down on medical advice.
Van Niekerk says he sees the move as a logical extension of his career path. He also promised some changes at the company. "I can agree with a lot of the criticism about the Brainware structure," he says, "and changing that will be one of the priorities." He hopes to restructure the company before the third quarter of this year, in an effort to bring focus back to the sprawling operation.
His motivations for leaving Sita are personal, he says. "I achieved what I wanted to at InfoPlan by creating a new structure and now it is time to move on."
Brainware, he adds, was an obvious choice. "The share price is under-valued and I think I can make a real difference there. And they have some impressive entrepreneurial start-ups within the company."
Van Niekerk was with InfoPlan, the Sita forerunner, for four years before being asked to establish Sita.
Sources within Sita say the company is still recovering from the shock of the announcement. Employees had no prior warning of the resignation, and heard the news only after the announcement by Brainware.
Van Niekerk was the driving force behind the formation of the company, a R1 billion turnover operation employing more than 2 000 people. Normal operations have not yet begun, and the company still considers itself as going through a transformation period.
Van Niekerk says it might be early to predict the reaction to his departure. "The board appreciates that I have offered my services for a further period. Some of the employees, the InfoPlan old-timers, are a bit disappointed." He will make himself available for consultation for a further three months after joining Brainware.
Sita had a rocky formation period, with claims that it is unconstitutional and attacks on its business plans from many quarters.
A possible merger between Spicer and Brainware was shelved in February this year after Spicer claimed that the asking price for Brainware shares was unreasonable. At the time, Brainware replied that its shares were undervalued and that the JSE price did not reflect a fair image of the company.
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