CFO South Africa Magazine 2019 - 1st Issue

MAGAZINE FOR FINANCE PROFESSIONALS IN SOUTH AFRICA 1 • 2019 CFO.CO.ZA

Workday’s Zuko Mdwaba The making of a tech leader

Raisibe Morathi Group CFO Nedbank Focus on the goal

Two CFOs, one name Jaco Maritz meets Jaco Maritz

Barry Curtin CFO Dimension Data Notes from the deep end

CFO vs CEO How does your salary compare?

Kirsten King FD Comair Flying high but staying grounded

CFOs CARE Orient Hills Day Care supported by Brett and Candice Tromp

Tsholofelo Molefe

Saying NO to Gupta & Co

Telkom CFO reflects on her dark Eskom days

/ YOUR GLOBAL WALLET

CONTENTS

M A G A ZI N E F O R F I N A N C E P R O F E S S IO N A L S I N S O U TH A F R I C A 1 • 2019 CFO.CO.ZA

Workday’s Zuko Mdwaba The making of a tech leader

page 12

Raisibe Morathi Group CFO Nedbank Focus on the goal

page 60

Barry Curtin CFO Dimension Data Notes from the deep end

page 52

Two CFOs, one name Jaco Maritz meets Jaco Maritz CFO vs CEO How does your salary compare?

page 20 page 48 page 36

40

Kirsten King FD Comair Flying high but staying grounded

CFOs CARE Orient Hills Day Care supported by Brett and Candice Tromp

page 42

Tsholofelo Molefe

page 26

Saying NO to Gupta & Co

Telkom CFO reflects on her dark Eskom days

CFO South Africa is the organisation for finance executives in South Africa. Our goal is to connect finance professionals online and off in order to share knowledge, exchange interests and open up business opportunities.

CFO Enterprises (Pty) Ltd 1 Wedgewood Link, Bryanston, Johannesburg, 2191, South Africa. | +27 (0)11 083 7515 | CFO.co.za © 2019 CFO Enterprises (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

MANAGING DIRECTOR Graham Fehrsen gfehrsen@cfo.co.za +27 (0)79 898 0227 EDITOR IN CHIEF Joël Roerig jroerig@cfo.co.za +27 (0)76 371 2856

CFO SOUTH AFRICA COMMUNITY MANAGER John Deane jdeane@cfo.co.za +27 (0)82 570 9482 DESIGN Elizabeth Ferraris PHOTOGRAPHY

MANAGING EDITOR Georgina Guedes gguedes@cfo.co.za +27 (0)83 651 2789

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Patrick Furter Lizelle Furter Ter Hollmann Liezel Badenhorst

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS Beth Amato, Caylynne Fourie, Kate Ferreira, Toni Muir, Sungula Nkabinde PRINTING Novus Holdings coenraad.pretorius@novus.holdings +27 (0)11 201 3460

Community 7 8 42 46 48 76 82

From the managing editor CFOs moving in, up and away this quarter CFOs Care: Why Brett and Candice Tromp support Orient Hills Day Care The future is now. Are CFOs ready?

Two CFOs, one name: Jaco Maritz Introducing the 2019 CFO Awards nominees From the community manager

Leadership 12 18 20

Nedbank Group CFO Raisibe Morathi: Focus on the goal Dinner with Richard Sutton: Stress can give you the edge Workday's Zuko Mdwaba: The making of a tech leader

12

Governance 26 32 36

Tsholofelo Molefe: Saying NO to Gupta & Co SAP Concur: Control your employee spend CFO vs CEO: How does your salary compare?

Growth 52 56 60

Comair FD Kirsten King: Flying high and staying grounded Give the CMO a seat at the table – they deserve it Didata CFO Barry Curtin: Notes from the deep end

Vision 64 68 72

Thandeka Zondi: A woman’s place is in the FinTech revolution Ansarada's Oksana Goncharova: One step ahead 8 questions for Tryphosa Ramano, PPC CFO

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FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR

The power of storytelling

W

hen I was interviewing Nedbank CFO Raisibe Morathi for the story on page 12 of this magazine, I asked her what aspect of her personality had served her best in her career. Instead of answering – as many would have – “perseverance” or “a good work ethic” or “high EQ”, she told me a story.

It is for all these reasons that we aim to help CFOs to share their great stories with their community. This issue is full of them – from Barry Curtin’s candid story of the challenges of his first 12 months at Dimension Data (page 60) to Kirsten King’s explanation of how she tried to simplify her life and ended up heading up finance at South Africa’s largest private airline operator (page 52).

The story was about how she ended up running the Two Oceans Half Marathon almost by accident, and without having prepared properly. By the time she was finished with her tale, I understood completely that I was in the presence of someone formidable, who would do what it takes to get the job done.

But the standout story of this issue is undoubtedly the one on our cover – Tsholofelo Molefe, now the deputy CFO of Telkom, giving us the inside track on how she felt when she realised that dodgy Gupta dealings were going down at Eskom, and what happened next.

She’s told this story before – at the public inquiry by the parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises, but this is an opportunity to understand her anger and fears as she was dragged into – and escaped from – the machine of state capture (page 26).

This is the power of storytelling. It doesn’t “tell”; it transports. The listener goes on a journey with the teller and arrives with a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of them.

I am not alone in my belief in the power of storytelling.

Princeton scientists showed that there’s no difference in our brain function when we experience something or when we listen to someone tell a story about that experience – we’re basically living it along with them. When we listen to a story, our brains release cortisol, which helps us focus, and oxytocin, which makes us feel empathy. And according to Kindra Hall, American storytelling guru, listening to a story increases retention of information by up to seven times. There’s no denying that we are powerfully engaged by storytelling.

And then, did you know that there are two Jaco Maritzes who are CFOs in South Africa? One works at Syspro and the other at Acacia Mining. When we stumbled across this oddity, we thought it would be fun to get them in a room together to find out if they had anything else in common. The story of their first encounter is on page 48, and at the top of this column is a photo of me with them at CFO South Africa's Bryanston office.

Georgina Guedes gguedes@cfo.co.za +27 83 651 2789

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PEOPLE MOVES

CFOs MOVING IN, UP AND AWAY THIS QUARTER Alexander Forbes’ Group CFO quits, Mr Price gets a new CFO and BP Southern Africa bids farewell to its old CFO and ushers in the new.

Teixeira as Group Five CFO. Anthony joins Group Five from the Consolidated Power Projects Group South Africa, where he was responsible for South African and over-border markets in which Group Five operates.

Zaf Mohamed

Zaf Mahomed took over from Tyrone Soondarjee as CFO at Cell C, moving on from the same role at McDonald's South Africa. He said, “Telecommunications is a fastpaced and exciting industry and I look forward to joining the team at Cell C and putting my skills to work in such a vibrant and interesting business.”

Avinash Desmond Maharaj was appointed as ArcelorMittal’s new CFO, taking the place of Gerhard van Zyl, who has been acting CFO since the resignation of Dean Subramanian in May. Naidene Ford-Hoon resigned as the Alexander Forbes CFO, shortly after CEO Andrew Darfoor – with whom she worked very closely – was fired.

Alexander Forbes thanked Naidene for her services and said that a succession plan has been activated.

Anthony Clacher replaced Cristina

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Mark Stirton took Mark Blair’s place as CFO of Mr Price, after Mark was appointed CEO, replacing Stuart Bird, who retired in December. Mark joined the group in June 2014 and was promoted to group corporate finance director in April 2017.

“Telecommunications is a fast-paced and exciting industry and I look forward to joining the team at Cell C.” – Zaf Mahomed Jabu Ndlovu has taken over as CFO of BP Southern Africa from Udayan Sen, who has moved to Australia, as CFO for BP in the region. Jabu said: “I look forward to stepping into the very big shoes of my predecessor and continuing the agenda that he started and the difference he made to the business.”

Tim Jacobs was appointed as the new CFO of MultiChoice, which unbundled from Naspers in September. This came shortly after

Avashnee Ramdial

his resignation as Altron’s acting CFO. Altron’s current COO, Andrew Holdin, will be replacing Tim as acting CFO. Calib Cassim was permanently appointed as CFO of Eskom after acting in the role for 16 months.

Calib will lead and oversee the power company’s strategy, as well as being the general manager for financial planning and economic regulation responsible for application for electricity prices to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

Martin Page took over from former Toro Gold CFO Gary Townsend.

Prior to joining Toro Gold, Martin served as CFO at the Curzon Group and the head of finance at Amara Mining.

Absa Wealth and Investment Management CFO Avashnee Ramdial moved to Stanlib as its new CFO. She has previously held posi-

Mike Buckham: Time for personal and family opportunities On 31 December, Mike Buckham resigned as CFO of Sygnia. He has been replaced by Murad Sirkot.

Mike told CFO South Africa that he is taking a break from the corporate space to focus on family and personal opportunities.

“I have enjoyed my time at Sygnia and have had exposure to a number of exciting initiatives and a very dynamic and high-performance environment. I currently do not have

tions at Standard Bank and Deloitte, where she worked for more than 10 years.

Mireille Levenstein took over from Peter Riskowitz as Long4Life CFO. Prior to her appointment at Long4Life, Mireille served as the CFO of Paracon Holdings for 16 years until Adcorp Holdings acquired the company. She then served as a director on the boards of several Adcorp subsidiaries.

The Cape Town International Convention Centre appointed Wayne de Wet as its new CFO. He will be responsible for developing and implementing its financial strategies, strategic leadership of finance and supply chain management, and growth and resource management

any immediate plans other than to assist with a number of family affairs and to explore opportunities with my current skill set.

“I am genuinely looking forward to a bit of a sabbatical while I consider my long-term career opportunities.

I am told that a break is something you should grab with both hands if the opportunity arises and it can have an incredibly positive impact on a career.”

within the finance department.

Matjila, who resigned in November.

Alet Coetzee, who has more than 10 years’ experience in the mining and manufacturing industries, will be taking over as CFO of Northam Platinum from Ayanda Khumalo.

EOH Holdings appointed Megan Pydigadu as its new group FD. She is a seasoned finance executive, having held senior financial positions at De Beers, Bateman, Mix Telematics Limited and Eazi Access Rental.

SAPS appointed major-general Puleng Dimpane as its new CFO, shortly after the suspension of Avhashoni Ramikosi. Avhashoni was suspended after his name featured prominently in questionable financial transactions amounting to R106 million, and appeared in the VBS “Great Bank Heist” report.

Wim Abraham De Klerk took over from Odwa Mhlwana as interim group CFO of Denel. Odwa was dismissed following a disciplinary process for allegations relating to mismanagement. Wim Abraham De Klerk took over from Odwa Mhlwana as interim group CFO of Denel. Odwa was dismissed following a disciplinary process for allegations relating to mismanagement.

Garron Stewart was appointed as Wade International’s new FD, joining them from Senior Flexonics, where he served as CFO for more than four years.

Heinrich Stander took on the role of Choppies CFO following the resignation of Sanooj Pullarote.

The Land Bank appointed Konehali Gugushe as its new acting CFO, after previous CFO Bennie van Rooyen was appointed as acting CEO.

Metrofile appointed Kelebogile Dludla as their new Group CFO. She replaced Mark Clark McGowan.

Pierre van Eeden replaced Cornelia Kemp as the FD of Sebata Holdings.

Mireille Levenstein

CFO Matshepo More has taken over as acting CEO of the Public Investment Corporation from Dan

Megan Pydigadu

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PEOPLE MOVES

Deon Fredericks took over from Bob Head as the interim CFO of South African Airways. Deon is on secondment from Telkom for 12 months.

Naahied Gamieldien, AYO Technology’s CFO, is acting as CEO until a replacement is found for previous CEO, Kevin Hardy.

Deon Fredericks

Manenzhe Manenzhe was appointed as the new City of Johannesburg CFO after former CFO Charity Wurayayi was implicated in a controversial tender.

Lindsey Ord, who was integral in the establishment of Climate Fund Managers, took up the role as its CFO. Lindsey has 20 years’ experience in private equity fund management, specifically in financial and risk management and end-to-end transaction design and implementation.

Mikateko Tshetshe was promoted to the position of Unilever Africa’s vice president of finance. Prior to joining Unilever, she was the CFO for AstraZeneca and previously spent 12 years in the FMCG industry at SC Johnson.

Lindt & Sprüngli CFO Sandro Weber has moved from the South African division to São Paulo.

Hitler Maluleke was fired as the CFO of Giyani Municipality for his direct involvement in the VBS investment scandal.

Zunaid Bulbulia resigned as Huge Group CFO, but will stay on as a consultant. He has joined Mobile Outsourcing Solutions, a division of Morvest Group. l

Mikateko Tshetshe

“I look forward to stepping into the very big shoes of my predecessor and continuing the agenda that he started.” – Jabu Ndlovu

BP CFO Udayan Sen reflects on his time in SA Udayan Sen, who recently moved on from his role as CFO of BP Southern Africa to a new role within BP, in Australia, reflected on his time in the country in an interview with CFO South Africa.

I had three simple objectives when I landed in the country back in 2015.

What do you think of South Africa, having completed your time here?

The first was to find a local South African successor to my role. I have worked on this from day one, creating a robust succession pool and proud to say that this objective has been achieved.

I absolutely love South Africa and its people. I think South Africa has the potential to be one of the world’s most desired places to live.

The second was to raise the capability of the team. In 2018, our success was highlighted when three finance resources developed into business roles.

What have you achieved in your time as CFO of BP Southern Africa?

The third was to improve the internal functional or business partnership. I have been able to integrate the Global

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CFO MAGAZINE • CFO.CO.ZA

Udayan Sen

Business Services (GBS) team with embedded finance in terms of ways of working, and despite the dislocation of physical location, we are more of a ‘one team’ than ever before.

Find your dream job today JobsInFinance.co.za Employers and recruiters are invited to create an account on JobsInFinance.co.za and upload their finance vacancies for immediate results.

For special deals and campaigns, please contact Nick Smith | nsmith@cfo.co.za | +27 72 202 1071

Photos: Patrick Furter 12

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FOCUS ON

THE GOAL Nedbank CFO Raisibe Morathi is one of the humblest powerhouses you’ll ever come across in a South African boardroom. CFO Magazine spoke to her about her impressive career, her unexpected running achievements and her reporting accolades. “For me, one of the interesting things in life is that if you set yourself a goal and your mind is focused on reaching that goal, you probably will reach it.” By Georgina Guedes

R

aisibe Morathi describes herself as “fortunate” to have achieved what she has, but her career tells a different story – one of hard work, focus and perseverance. When CFO South Africa asked her what personality trait got her where she is today, she said that she “takes well to challenges”.

She then shared a story to highlight what she meant: “I work hard, but believe that you’re not complete if you don’t focus on fitness as well. My sister persuaded me to get into running, and I was working my way up from five kilometres to 10 kilometres, when my daughter, who is a very good runner, decided she wanted to run the Two Oceans Marathon half-marathon with her father.”

Registrations for the race had already closed but Raisibe was able to call in a favour through her relationship with Old Mutual, and she entered her husband and daughter in the race. This was in November.

In December, with the race looming large, four months away, Raisibe’s husband pulled out, saying he wasn’t fit enough, and there wasn’t enough time to train.

“But I’d worked so hard to get that registration. So I thought, OK, I’ll do it. Now remember, I’d only ever completed a 10km run, and this is now December. So I started training. I did my first 21km in January, knowing I had to get my time down to three hours. I didn’t make it. I did another two 21km and still didn’t manage three hours. I knew that I had a very big risk of being cut off in the Two Oceans. But I showed up on the day, and I made it to the finish. And I went back the next year.”

She adds that when she reaches the finish line, you can tell that the overall race is about to finish. “I am like a tortoise, coming up from behind. Anyone who finishes after me must be in very bad condition.”

Although she missed the Two Oceans this year because

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of the Nedbank roadshow, she remains committed to her fitness routine. She wakes up at 5am to go to the gym or run on the road. “I just love it. For me one of the interesting things in life is that if you set yourself a goal and your mind is focused on reaching that goal, you probably will reach it.”

Growing up focused This has been a theme in Raisibe’s life. She comes from a family of five girls, raised by a single mother after their father passed away. She describes her mother as “lovely”. “Losing your father when you are five years old is not a nice experience, but I didn’t grow up feeling that something was missing from my life. My mother had a strong personality and she was a teacher, so she inspired us with education. She studied for most of her life.”

Raisibe says that one of her life lessons came from how her mother balanced work and raising a family. “Raising a family isn’t an excuse for not being busy. Her attitude helped me when I was raising children and focusing on my career. I knew I could do both because she had.”

Growing up in Polokwane, Raisibe completed high school in four years instead of five. “I was very fortunate.

I listened to my teachers. So they thought I was ready to do Grade 10 without doing Grade 9, and I coped very well.”

The teacher explained to her that she could express her interests professionally by becoming a chartered accountant. “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I wanted to be it.”

After completing matric, she went on to the University of Venda – a choice driven by financial constraints. “There wasn’t enough money to put us all through tertiary education and the University of Venda was cheaper and relatively close to home.”

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“It was very difficult to accept that. I had just passed successfully and now I had to redo some of my degree. It felt like an enormous challenge, and I did it under protest, but I am very glad I did it. It very quickly gave me a level of maturity. It added to my determination. I knew I could do something else and not be a CA, but because I wanted it so badly, I kept working at it.”

Gaining experience After completing articles, she joined Nedbank Investment Bank as a trainee, and then spent a while moving around in the banking industry – gaining exposure to structured finance, corporate finance and private equity.

“My advice to people who change employers frequently is not to underestimate the investment you require to get to know people and how things work in a particular environment.”

However, when her teachers wanted her to focus on science subjects, Raisibe stopped listening. “I kept running to accounting. I liked the accounting teachers. There was a teacher who had worked in Joburg and then come back to Polokwane to teach. He was so clever, and I wanted to be just as clever. I had an affinity with accounting and commerce subjects.”

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Under the apartheid government, black universities were not allowed to accredit CA courses, and when Raisibe applied to do her CTA, she found that none of the accredited universities would accept her degree.

So she had to enrol in Wits to redo part of her degree before she could do articles.

“In that initial period of my career, I moved around quite a bit, which I am not proud of. When you are young, you are impatient and you want to grow. If someone phoned with a job opportunity, I took it.

But you can compromise your internal growth by doing this, you lose experience in the vertical.”

She then moved out of the private sector and in to the Investment Development Corporation (IDC) where she finally did settle down for seven and a half years.

“After 18 months, I got into executive management.

This was in 2001 or 2002, so I have had the privilege by now that most of my career has been in executive management roles.”

At the IDC, she enjoyed the broad experience of working in many different sectors. She also worked on many projects on an ad hoc basis with government, and ended up becoming an economic advisor to Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka between 2006 and 2007, as a secondment by the IDC while still retaining some of the responsibilities at the IDC. While her time at the IDC provided many opportunities for growth, the political complexities of dealing

“For every challenge, there are also lessons on how to do things differently going forward.”

with government left Raisibe “seriously tired of anything to do with work. It was all just too much". So, she took a four-month sabbatical.

She was then approached by Sanlam in 2008, where she was already a non-executive director, to join them. “They already knew me, so I didn’t have to sit in an interview and talk about strengths and weaknesses. I took the role.”

This required that she move to Cape Town with her family, which initially seemed possible. But then it turned out that her husband couldn’t leave his job.

So she ended up with the children in Cape Town while he flew up and down to be with them. “It wasn’t working,” Raisibe says.

Joining the green bank In 2009, she received a call from Nedbank that changed everything. “We started a conversation around the CFO role. Sanlam’s presence in Joburg is very small. I loved my time and learnt a lot from Johan van Zyl and witnessed their transformation journey. It was tough to come to the conclusion that I was going back to Joburg, but it was the right thing to do for my family.”

She says that although it was the same city and the same view, starting a new role was not without its challenges.

“My advice to people who change employers frequently is not to underestimate the investment you

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require to get to know people and how things work in a particular environment. Technical knowledge aside, fitting into an ecosystem requires a very deliberate effort. I was at Sanlam for 18 months, and then I came here just as I was learning how people work, how to do proper Afrikaans greetings. It was quite a stressful transitional period.”

Raisibe wasn’t the only one experiencing a transition.

She arrived at Nedbank in a period of great upheaval.

“The banking sector was changing globally, and I had to arrive and lead from the top, which is not as easy as it would have been for someone coming from internal. I was somewhat fortunate in that I came into a business unit that was very stable. And the CEO Mike Brown, who was just taking over in his role, was very supportive.”

She says that she approached this integration by being humble and asking lots of questions. “I am not scared or shy to say that I don’t know. And if you ask people a question, it’s actually quite overwhelming how keen and open they are to sharing. And if in that conversation you identify that you have a similar hobby, or attend the same church, or that you both like chocolate in the afternoon, that’s how you get to be part of an establishment.”

She adds that the people-centric Nedbank culture also

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helped to ease the transition. “All companies will tell you the same, but the amount of effort that Nedbank has put in over the many years, investing in things like team cohesion, measuring happiness, unhappiness and entropy, and going the extra mile in addressing all those things, really makes a difference. The culture is one of the best out of any of the places that I have worked at. It is very consciously people orientated.”

Depth at Nedbank This marks her tenth year at Nedbank and she’s still not resting on her laurels. “We have 6,000 people in this campus, and 32,000 across the business. We operate in different countries and I still have a lot to learn. When I joined Nedbank, I had 500-odd people in my cluster. Now I have 1,100.”

She says that her portfolio includes finance and shared services. Finance, becoming ever more efficient, isn’t a huge contributor to the growth of her team size, but delivering no less than 37 different types of group services for all the organisations within Nedbank requires ever more staff members.

“Everyone who works at Nedbank – every one of the 32,000 people who work here – get something from me somehow.”

True diversity Raisibe believes she is a “community project”. “I am who I am because of others around me who support me.”

She says that she is aware that she was given opportunities in a world where these have not been accessible to many people.

“The world will truly change when these opportunities are accessible to more people. I am sure that in Nedbank’s executive meetings, my colleagues are tired of my voice saying, ‘What about women? What about people from underprivileged backgrounds?’ It’s probably not common for CFOs who are all about the bottom line. But for me, diversity is beneficial for everybody because we learn from different perspectives.”

She is a patron of the Women’s Forum at Nedbank. “We are focused on increasing awareness about the fact that women are different, and creating opportunities for women and black people. When I arrived in 2009, I was the first woman to be part of the leadership team in finance, now there are three of us. When I started I was the only African woman in group exco, now there are three of us. In my own exco team of eight people in Group Finance, four are women. It remains quite important for me that we see more women coming into the pipeline.

Our team is expanding and we’re well aware that that expansion should create more opportunities for inclusion.”

When asked, she says that she has enjoyed a number of successes in the finance space. “Every year from the start of my time here until now, we’ve received at least two or three financial reporting awards. This year, three were very prestigious, bringing the cumulative reporting awards to 30 by December 2018.”

A cousin even told Raisibe that during their third year at UCT, they did a case study on one of Raisibe’s successes relating to Nedbank’s philosophy around integrated reporting and how it’s blended into the business. “Reporting has changed quite a lot. There have been a lot of learnings. For every challenge, there are also lessons on how to do things differently going forward.”

She says she is also proud that Nedbank lives up to its colour. “We were the first company in South Africa to build a green building. Ever since then, we have built more and more of those – so many that I’ve actually lost count now. We’ve been true to our colour and true to our philosophy of sustainability since long before it became fashionable.”

Another big change that’s happened on her watch has been the evolution of 43 different IT systems running across finance, procurement and HR into one SAP system, in a project aptly titled “43 to 1”.

“It wasn’t without complications, but we did it on budget

and on time. The biggest thing when you change systems that include critical things like reporting is that you might have delays or mis-statements, but we didn’t have any of those where it mattered. It was a great learning experience.”

Last year, she had to deal with a massive project to unwind Nedbank’s post-retirement medical aid liability, involving actuaries, lawyers, accountants and the HR department, and overseen by two board sub-committees in the bank. When we interviewed her towards the end of 2018, she was in the final stages of winding up the last leg of the separation from Old Mutual, which involved the buying out of small shareholders with less than 100 shares, offering them market prices plus a five percent premium.

She says that the growth in the bank has been phenomenal – growing from a client base of four million in 2010 to eight million today, and from a market capitalisation of R60 billion to R130 billion. Earnings grew from R2.6 billion to around R12 billion.

She copes with all this change and turmoil with the same approach she did the Two Oceans half-marathon. “I take a deep breath whenever I come across something that’s difficult, because I won’t know until I try,” she says.l

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Dinner with Richard Sutton: Stress can give you the edge Top CFOs joined the coach to champions Richard Sutton to learn about how to harness stress to enhance performance.

I

n October 2018, some of South Africa’s leading CFOs had an intimate, high-profile dinner with world-renowned coach Richard Sutton, who has established himself as one of the leading global speakers in the areas of health, performance and stress management solutions.

see stress as an advantage, you can achieve amazing things,” Richard said.

The CFOs from leading South African organisations who attended included Raisibe Morathi from Nedbank, Tsholofelo Molefe from Telkom, Wayne Koonin from Omnia, Glen Pearce from Sappi, Nico Botha from Citi Bank and Ramasela Ganda from Barloworld Equipment SA.

2. Champions adapt

They gathered at the exclusive Marble Restaurant in Rosebank to discuss the idea of ‘Potential to Performance’.

The advantage of stress Well known for his success with coaching highly pressured sports superstars, Richard told CFOs that the road to success was hidden in the response to stress.

He spoke about tennis star Kevin Anderson who nearly gave up his career but with Richard’s coaching, ended up becoming a grand-slam winning champion. “If you

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The two overriding concepts that underpinned Richard’s contribution were: 1. Pressure is a privilege

He went on to explain that there are several factors which can enhance and hinder us from performing at our optimum. The most fundamental driver is stress, something we all experience and towards which we each have a different tolerance.

“Switch off” your stress During the dinner, Richard spoke about the power of our mindset and using stress to overcome challenges and adversity. He explained that all successful athletes and business professionals possess this trait and that for us to be successful, it is important to our physical and mental well-being that we develop the ability to identify and acknowledge the level of stress.

Most importantly, it is important that we learn how to “switch if off”.

Ramasela Ganda, CFO, Barloworld Equipment

Richard Sutton, coach to champions

Wayne Koonin, CFO, Omnia

Raisibe Morathi, Group CFO, Nedbank

Richard said: “The longer we have been stressed, the more difficult it is to shut down the stress axis. In these situations, deliberate activation of the vagus nerve is a way to restore biological balance, which can be achieved by partaking in visceral manipulation, massage therapy, controlled breathing exercises, swimming, cold water facial immersion, yoga, meditation and music.”

CFO SA community manager John Deane concluded the evening, saying: “It was an eye-opening evening and an incredible opportunity to share notes with some of SA’s most influential business leaders. Leadership starts with us and it is our duty and responsibility to use stress to boost performance and be the catalyst to change, in our organisations, communities and country.” l

Glen Pearce thanked everyone for a “truly inspiring evening” of laughter, lessons, incredible food and networking. “One of the best I’ve had in a long time,” he said.

The evening was made possible by dinner partner Thomson Reuters, which has now rebranded as Refinitiv.

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The making of a tech leader He should have been a doctor. He could have been a professional cyclist. But Workday Country Leader Zuko Mdwaba is one of South Africa’s preeminent tech gurus and the regional captain of Workday’s spectacular global expansion. “One of my biggest beliefs is that we are architects of our own destiny.” By Joël Roerig and Sungula Nkabinde

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Workday’s Kiv Moodley, Lameez Subaya and Zuko Mdwaba supporting the CFO community during CFO Day 2018.

I

f Zuko Mdwaba wasn’t as affable and warm as he is, his boundless energy would probably make you feel slightly bad about yourself. Colleagues in the small-but-exponentially-growing Workday SA team still raise their eyebrows and ask their boss: “How do you do all the things you do?”

Captaining a team of 12 cycling friends through the torture and triumph of the Coronation Double Century would be a top life achievement for many. Taking Instagram-selfies at the Netflix HQ when in California for work would be a career highlight for most. But Zuko does both in the same month that he rides the 94.7 Cycle Challenge under three hours, grows the Workday SA team for the future and builds the business during important sales meetings in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

As we sit down to chat, also in that very same month, he has just returned from yet another exploit: the annual Workday Rising conference in Austria. With 20 South African delegates from both customers and prospects (“I prefer to call them future customers”) in tow, it felt like a cherry on the top of Workday’s first year in Africa, he reveals. “Those 20 South Africans all went through the effort of taking leave, applying for visas and staying in Vienna for a week, just to go a hear from other Workday clients. It’s a significant milestone,” says Zuko, reflecting on the 365 days in which he changed from SA employee #1 to becoming the

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expansion captain he was hired to be.

Zuko describes himself as a business executive juggling five balls: work, family, health, friends and his spiritual life. But before he talks about how he balances these five elements, he takes us back to his childhood – where a tech guru was born in a time and place where tech played absolutely no role.

The rise of ‘Doc’ Mdwaba If you have ever driven the road between East London and Bloemfontein and gazed towards the Lesotho mountains around Aliwal North, you know how vast and undeveloped the rural area where Zuko hails from is.

“I am from Coville, a small village in the Herschel district in the Eastern Cape,” he explains, before deflecting a lot of the credit for his success to his parents and his siblings, who inspired with their school results. Education was “at the core of what my parents inculcated” and from as early as six years old Zuko honed his sales skills in the general store that his family ran. The question, still, is how a bright boy from the middle-of-nowhere became a business leader and a globetrotter. “One of my biggest beliefs...,” says Zuko. “...is that we are architects of our own destiny.”

Racist Apartheid policies and inferior Bantu education would not deliver the maths and science talent that

Zuko hands the 2018 Young CFO of the Year Award to Dis-Chem Pharmacies CFO Rui Morais

Workday’s EMEA boss Gonzalo Benedit, global vice-chairman Phil Wilmington and country leader Zuko Mdwaba with CFO South Africa Zuko with Celiwe Ross, Human Capital Director at Old Mutual

young Zuko showcased. His family saw a great future for him as a doctor, one of the few known professions for clever kids. This notion went so far that the 13-yearold Zuko was routinely called ‘Doc’ by his paternal grandfather. However, after watching TV shows like Star Trek ignited an interest in technology, Zuko announced that he wanted to pursue tech during his studies – only to be told to get a grip. “They thought I was smoking something,” says Zuko with a broad smile.

“I might be a business leader now, but before all of that I am a technologist and I have been one for more than half of my life.”

Zuko embarked on a Bachelor of Science (BSc) under the pretence that this would be a solid base for medical studies, but his mind was made up and – as he admits now – he probably “tricked” his parents. They were soon to find out that, despite their misgivings, Zuko was headed to study Computer Science at the University of the Western Cape, far away from the protective gaze of his older brothers who had studied at Wits in Johannesburg.

MD Graham Fehrsen during Workday’s spectacular South African launch event in February 2018.

Innovative companies “I might be a business leader now, but before all of that I am a technologist and I have been one for more than half of my life,” says Zuko, who used to program computer code in the early days of digital. “It has been the most fascinating thing. I started in tech before the internet and have seen it evolve to this era of dragand-drop, where non-tech people can re-organise an entire solution, while the tech is all behind the scenes.”

From that fateful flouting of his family’s wishes to the career decisions that took him to companies like Telkom, Atos, Oracle, SAS and now Workday, Zuko remained that architect of his own destiny. In a way, he says, all of those companies were great companies in their space during those periods and are an integral part of who he is today. “But Workday is the best company I have ever worked for,” he says. “We spend more money on innovation than on sales and marketing. It gives a kick knowing that eight out of 10 most innovative companies are using Workday, according to the Forbes list on which Workday itself is second.”

Workday was founded by David Duffield, founder and former CEO of ERP company PeopleSoft, and former PeopleSoft chief strategist Aneel Bhusri following Oracle's hostile takeover of the company in 2005. Its cloud-based, mobile-first HR software has become dominant among large companies in the US and the

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rapid expansion is ever continuing, with forays into the rest of the world – and into finance-focused ERP systems.

Very intimate and personal “We are developing at a lightning pace. It’s scary,” says Zuko, looking relaxed and confident, rather than scared. “Good scary,” he says. Although Workday presents itself as an alternative to companies with a long legacy like SAP and Oracle, the narrative always revolves around Workday’s own strengths, he says. He adds that advocacy by customers is the most powerful advertising, for example, during the annual Workday Rising event, where current customers compare notes with each other and with potential customers.

the trenches”, someone who is “100 percent customer focused and engages with integrity”, “one of the most genuine, down to earth, likeable individuals”, “a visionary” and “a very cool gentleman”.

“I believe in inspirational leadership,” says Zuko. “I am inspired by Workday. A lot resonates with what I believe in. Everybody in business talks about culture these days, but the question should be: does your culture take you to the next frontier? As a leader I engage with purpose with everyone, sometimes I even feel I overdo it… But it is important to realise that what we take for granted can be a seed of inspiration for someone else.”

“More and more companies are realising the positive correlation between happy employees and a boost to the bottom line.”

“It is really amazing,” says Zuko, just back from the event in Austria. “I attended a lot of company events during my career.

Normally these things are a product dump, but this is very intimate and much more personal. We talk a lot about community at the company; and at Workday Rising you can really feel it. Negative feedback is also good and something we can learn from. We have an incredible 98 percent customer satisfaction, so it is important to appreciate transparency and not shy away from comments.”

Since Workday’s successful launch in South Africa last year February, it has been a rollercoaster ride for the team. “At the beginning of the year, we were entering an environment where people have built their careers knowing our competitors. I can relate. You get comfortable with what you know, with the devil you know,” says Zuko, describing the challenge of introducing a new player to a new market, although over 250 companies are already using Workday software in South Africa. “There are a lot of things we can tell you about why and how we are different to those companies, we can talk about our Power of One concept and all those other amazing things... But don’t just listen to us, listen to what our customers have to say.”

Inspirational leadership Zuko is also not short of personal endorsements. On LinkedIn, scores of former colleagues are queuing up to describe him as “a great manager, mentor and coach all in one”, an “energetic and inspirational leader” who is “not afraid to roll up his sleeves and dive into

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With a combination of endless energy and happy tenacity, Zuko is following the ‘happy employees, happy customers’ approach to building his team.

It is a method advocated from the outset by Workday’s founders, who personally interviewed the company’s first 500 hires. The most important thing, Zuko explains, is being relatable. “That is why leadership is always bi-directional. It is a process to find each other's levers of inspiration. Cycling might be one of them. Family [Zuko and his wife have a 10-year-old boy and eightyear-old girl] might be another. If you look around the globe, you will see that most innovative companies have an employee-centric culture. Great culture is no longer optional, but it is better for business. More and more companies are realising the positive correlation between happy employees and a boost to the bottom line.”

So, as his colleagues often ask him, how does he combine all those interests and activities, inside and outside of work?

“All the things I focus on in my life feed off each other,” Zuko explains. “Riding a bicycle is a big part of my life. A lot of strategies come to me while I am riding. It is not all about physical fitness. When you cycle through tough hills and you think ‘what the hell, this is hard’, your mental fitness kicks in. You hit a brick wall, but you focus and go through it. There is a direct parallel with work life. Workday is an incredible success story, but every day we are faced with competition that doesn’t sit still either. The key is to focus on our own core values: employees, customer service, integrity, innovation, fun and profitability.” l

The C-suite is singing a new tune.

Whether you’re a midsize business or a Fortune 50® enterprise, a finance and HR system from Workday just works, as planned and as promised. And that sounds pretty great.

www.workday.co.za

Workday, the Workday logo, and Built for the Future are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc., registered in the United States and elsewhere. ©2018 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved.

Photos: Liezel Badenhorst 26

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SAYING NO TO GUPTA & CO “Courage, to me, means always doing the right thing, being tenacious and knowing when to say no,” says Telkom CFO Tsholofelo Molefe. Seldom did the courage of South African public sector CFOs get tested as unrelentingly as during the years of state capture by the Gupta brothers and associated crooks. In a candid interview, Tsholofelo describes how a web of deceit and corruption was being spun during her tenure at Eskom in 2014 and 2015, she recalls the short nights and the toll on her family – and she provides a blueprint for saying no. By Joël Roerig

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“I always enjoyed working for Eskom, because I could make a difference and a meaningful contribution to the country.”

W

hen Tsholofelo Molefe was suspended as finance director at Eskom in March 2015, she finally had some time for something she had been planning to do for a while: get some rest. “I had been sleeping three hours a day during the preceding months. I also finally got to spend good time with my children and my mother, who was taking all the publicity and the suspension really hard.”

While Eskom bosses told the media that Tsholofelo and fellow executives had been suspended to make way for an investigation into the utility’s poor performance, insiders knew better. ‘Tsholo’ tried to complete the puzzle of what happened in the 12 months since she met a “young boy in jeans and All Stars” at Montecasino, who was introduced to her as Salim Essa.

“Even when I was sitting at home, trying to figure things out, I knew I was doing what would have made my father proud,” she says. The strict, protective and inspirational late Abel Molefe was an Anglican minister who gave Tsholo her focused outlook on life: “If you don’t try, you fail. Take life on. Take a chance, as long as it is not going to kill you. As long as you do the right

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thing. That was my father,” says Tsholofelo, who was born and bred in Soweto as the fifth of six siblings.

“I was introverted and very studious. When others were out, I preferred to sit with my father and read adventure books.”

As we sit down in the Riboville Boutique Hotel, Tsholofelo (50) speaks about her favourite leadership book: Leadership Wisdom From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. What stands out for her, she says, is the power of positive thinking and the ability to be humble at the same time. The plan is to talk about the strength it takes to say no when the going gets tough. For a CFO, Tsholofelo explains, it always begins with governance and it ends with ethics. “During my time at Eskom, there was a lot of pressure to approve certain things that I did not agree with. I never had any doubt about what to do. If a full board would have told me to carry on with it, I would have stepped down.”

Making a difference Tsholofelo had wanted to be a doctor, but her schooling at the business-focused Pace College and a scholarship from the British Council to study in the UK set her on

GOVERNANCE the path to become a CA(SA). After articles at Coopers & Lybrand, Tsholofelo gained experience at IBM, Liberty Life, Absa and FNB, before joining Eskom in 2005, where she later became head of Group Customer Services and loved the interaction with stakeholders ranging from key industrial customers to laymen in rural areas that were receiving electricity for the first time. “I always enjoyed working for Eskom, because I could make a difference and a meaningful contribution to the country.”

When she succeeded Paul O’Flaherty as FD in February 2014, board member Mafika Mkwanazi – a former Transnet chairman – took her aside to emphasise she was now a board member with fiduciary responsibilities. “He said: all directors are equal. The buck stops with you. At the time, I did not know why he was saying this, but it made me strong and it helped me to be clear about my responsibilities.”

Tsholofelo’s promotion to FD came in a time of crisis.

Eskom was running out of funds. The new power station projects required piles of money and the utility had started to use a lot of diesel for power generation, which is expensive. “We tried to avoid load shedding, but running costs were R1 billion a month,” she recalls.

When Tsholofelo presented her financial sustainability plan to the board, which was chaired by Zola Tsotsi, it wasn’t well-received. Tsholofelo was disappointed, as she was warned by Tsotsi that “heads were going to roll” if no better plan was presented. Interim CEO Collin Matjila then said he would solve the situation “together with the FD”.

Meeting Salim Essa Matjila, Tsholofelo explains, appeared keen to use his “executive authority” very loosely, often citing a “mandate from the shareholder”, for example, when he wanted to rush the appointment of a consultant to unlock cash on the balance sheet and optimise working capital, claiming that things would “take too long” otherwise.

“He always wanted to do his own things on the side, while our procurement policy prescribed a proper technical assessment. We didn’t know why he acted like this. We didn’t know there was involvement of the Gupta family in it. He just said there was a ‘mandate’.”

And then, the conspiracy started unfolding.

“I met the interim CEO on a Sunday at Montecasino. A gentleman came and joined us and was introduced to me as Salim Essa. I was told he had done balance sheet optimisation work with City Power and Transnet and apparently his company Regiments Capital had done a eurobond with Goldman Sachs for Eskom previously.

The next day in the office, I was introduced to Eric Wood

by Salim Essa. He said, ‘We work with McKinsey in most instances.’ I said, ‘There is a procurement process.’ And Wood said, ‘We will bring a proposal in the next few days'."

Under pressure to deliver, Tsholofelo suggested they follow the (legitimate) emergency procurement process, which would only take a few days and allowed Regiments to send a proposal alongside a few other candidates. “But the interim CEO said, ‘No, we have tried with the likes of Deloitte for many years. We need to do something different and go with Regiments.’ I only received the proposal two weeks later; however it wasn’t a proposal, but a draft agreement that included pricing and T&Cs.”

Something was not right This was the period when Tsholofelo’s insistence on proper governance started to irk others. “I copied the head of legal, which the interim CEO was not happy about. He said he felt I wasn’t supporting him. By now it was very clear to me that something was not right and I started engaging board members, like the chairs of the investment committee, audit committee and sustainability committee. It turned out there was already tension about the interim CEO after he had signed a R43 million contract for three years of support to the New Age Business breakfast without following due processes.”

Tsholofelo refused to sign the draft agreement with Regiments, which is now known to have funneled gains from oversized contracts to the Guptas, and sent a memo with reasons to the CEO and the board. “Then there was silence for a couple of days. In the next board meeting, the chairman said the interim CEO and I were wasting time with our disagreements. There was one month to go and heads would roll, he warned again.

“If you don’t try, you fail. Take life on. Take a chance, as long as it is not going to kill you.”

Luckily, the chairperson of the sustainability committee spoke up and we decided to do a ‘high level desktop exercise’ to test the viability of the initiatives suggested

by Regiments. I put the proposal together in a week. The whole exercise cost less than R1 million. The Regiments proposal was half a billion rand. Most of their proposed initiatives to unlock cash on the balance sheet had already been started by us, as we had 45 initiatives that had been previously recommended by another financial advisory firm. Others were not sustainable. Only about two or three out of the 10 suggested by Regiments were worth pursuing.”

“For the Interim CEO, it was his way or the highway,” Tsholofelo recalls, also referring to his decision to stop the process to replace T-Systems as IT provider – and her discovery that Salim Essa was involved in T-Systems. “I really had to stand my ground."

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The next drama loomed large in November. “We were releasing interim results during a press conference with key industrial customers and journalists, 300 people had already RSVPed.Then the auditors said they could not sign off the financials, as the board’s investigation into the New Age breakfast contract was not included, even though it was a reportable irregularity.”

Pressure from the outside With the results presentation on Tuesday, time was of the essence on Saturday morning when Tsholofelo requested a board meeting to rectify the financials. But in the afternoon the chairman called her and said the meeting needed to be cancelled as he had “pressure from the outside”.Tsholofelo didn’t give in: “We couldn’t postpone, because we needed to have audited financials to put together a prospectus for international investors, which was essential.”

“There was always pushback on everything we did, a real battle.

Governance had gone out of the door.”

The company secretary then sent a text message to cancel the meeting, but Tsholofelo called board members individually to impress upon them to have the meeting proceed. The next day, the chairman had discovered a technical reason that made the board decision null and void and texted that he was with minister Lynn Browne and that she agreed. The only problem for Zola Tsotsi was that Tsholofelo was actually with the minister herself for another matter at the exact time he sent that message. “I showed it to the DG, who shared it with the minister… Lynn Browne had only been in her role for a short time. She didn’t know who to believe. She tried to call the chairman, but didn’t get hold of him. She told me, ‘Do what is right for the company.’ We went ahead and held the board meeting again that Monday and at 7pm the auditors signed off the financials.”

Despite all the shenanigans and the short nights, Tsholofelo says she still had energy to carry on, even after the “good board” was removed by the minister.

“When the only two board members that stayed were the ones I knew were connected with the Guptas, I knew something was wrong. In January it already caused a lot of unnecessary pressure. We had indicated how we wanted to raise funding and had started reflecting on alternatives. Our business plan needed to be approved, but board meetings kept getting cancelled.

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There were also attempts to not approve the renewal with Optimum Coal. There was always pushback on everything we did, a real battle. Governance had gone out of the door.”

End of the road Then came the end of the road at Eskom for Tsholofelo.

The story was that president Jacob Zuma had asked for a review in Eskom’s underperformance and that government didn’t want executives to “tamper” with the investigation – hence the suspension for her and two other executives. “I had been told by someone a few days earlier that I was going to be suspended and that Salim Essa was part of the plot. It seemed too farfetched. I didn’t think he had so much power.”

Although Tsholofelo says she was resting during her suspension, she also admits compiling at least five letters with her lawyer and sending them to Eskom to request clarity. “In the third month, Eskom’s lawyers approached me and they said you are agitated, but this will take long. My lawyer concluded they wanted me out in the first place. At first I did not want to believe it, but I knew he was right.”

Tsholofelo said her lawyer and an advocate convinced her to settle with Eskom and terminated her contract.

“They explained to me I was dealing with people that are ruthless. They said: We will win but you will have scars.

They will fight dirty. They will use the media, which is not always impartial. It will be very easy for them to paint you as an incompetent FD. My mother wasn’t taking it well and I didn’t want a public spectacle.”

Instead of a legal battle, Tsholofelo spent a year at home and project-managed her new house in Midrand.

Two years later, the corrupt Eskom bubble burst and last year, during a public inquiry by the parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises, Essa, Matjila, Tsotsi and Tsholofelo’s successor Anoj Singh were all implicated in state capture and dodgy dealings with the Gupta family. None of them work for or with Eskom any longer.

What is fascinating and inspiring about Tsholofelo is her consistency. When CFO Magazine met with her in September 2014, she was asked if she was afraid to risk her reputation when accepting such a tricky assignment as Eskom FD. Her reply, despite not revealing any of the tension between her and the interim CEO and chairman, left no room for interpretation: “As long as you know what your values are and you’re bold enough to stand your ground you will be ok. You need to act beyond reproach, never compromise your integrity, always do the right thing and never take shortcuts.” l

PART OF THE TELKOM STORY After a year at home, Tsholofelo Molefe joined Telkom in July 2016 as deputy CFO. She was then appointed as Chief Risk Officer for 15 months.

She took over the reign as Group CFO from Deon Fredericks in July 2018.

Why deputy CFO? “After my experience at Eskom, it was important to select the right employer. Telkom was looking for a deputy CFO. I still wanted to be a CFO, but it was about establishing myself in the corporate environment after being home for a year.”

Why Telkom? “What attracted me mostly to the company during my discussions with them was their leadership ethos, attitude towards governance and the bench strength of the board Telkom has a very good story: from being a bureaucratic government entity to becoming a goodperforming JSE-listed business within three years. I want to be part of that story.”

What are your 2019 ambitions? “So far Telkom has been very successful in building a sustainable business through the multi-year transformation programme that was initiated by Group CEO Sipho Maseko when he joined in 2013. The company continues to growth from strength to strength through our innovative product propositions in the market underpinned by our investment strategy. Part of my ambitions in 2019 is transforming the finance function to position ourselves as a strategic partner to our businesses as they continue to grow, making sure that our financial performance is among the top rated performers. Leading and directing the business in unlocking shareholder value is a key priority for me, and making sure that we do that in a sustainable manner.”

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Control your employee spend Founded in 1993 and acquired by SAP in 2014, SAP Concur is now ready to conquer the world, enabling African companies to make employees' travel and other spend simple, compliant and transparent. We spoke to Angelique Montalto, the regional sales director for Africa, to find out what the fuss is all about. By JoĂŤl Roerig

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Q. Do you incur a lot of travel yourself?

Yes, I absolutely love travelling and have spent most of my life on the move.

Although I have worked in Dublin, London, Barcelona, Berlin and Johannesburg, there is no place like home. If I had to pick a favourite city outside of South Africa, it would have to be Seattle – it has a big city attitude, great cuisine, is surrounded by beautiful lakes and mountain ranges all within easy reach.

Q. How did you get into the ERP world?

I grew up in Pretoria and studied a bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of Cape Town. The plan was always to get into international politics, but during one of the summer vacations I took on a telesales position at a computer training centre. One bite at the sales apple and I was hooked. Continuing in the sales world, I moved back to Gauteng and joined the Imperial Group in a permanent position within the financial services industry.

At the age of 25, I joined Oracle in Dublin and at that time there was a big shift in the economy towards ERP systems. The market was exploding and it was a very exciting time to be in that space.

Q. Why did you join SAP Concur?

Angelique Montalto (left) with Anna-Lisa Parker, Senior Marketing Manager New Markets

SAP bought Concur in 2014 and initially managed its presence in South Africa remotely via either the UK office or the Global Business Unit. This unit is responsible for over 250 global customers. After a few years as a Global Account Director at SAP in 2017, I was asked to set up a local SAP Concur office for Africa to expand into new markets, to better support our Africanbased customers and extend the SAP Concur client base.

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GOVERNANCE Initially I was wearing all of the hats: marketing, pre-sales, sales, partner management and support.

Now, almost two years later, I have built up an awesome team that includes sales executives, solution consultants, business development managers, client engagement executives and a marketing development representative. It has been an exhilarating journey to build this business from the ground up within the complexity of the travel and expense management industry.

Q. Why did SAP pick you for this role?

My track record has shown that I am well-positioned to manage both the new strategic initiative space and the more challenging environments and customers. Personally, I have a ‘customer first’ mentality – it’s about ensuring mutual success and being a change agent within the industry.

I believe this is a great fit with SAP Concur. I am more strategic than tactical and always start with the bigger picture in mind – what problem are we trying to solve?

How do we make everybody successful in the process?

It is about persistence and resilience. There are obviously some challenges along the path to success; we are up against smaller local players, lower pricing and local resourcing, but we have an exceptionally strong value proposition and a fully integrated travel and expense management solution.

Q. What does SAP Concur do?

SAP Concur provides truly connected spend management. The SAP Concur platform is designed to make employee spend simple, compliant and transparent, and it’s the power of the platform that sets us and our customers apart. SAP Concur provides the technology platform to manage all travel and expense data in one place. This includes bringing processes and cost efficiencies to the table, ensuring effective governance, risk and compliance management, and making spend data more visible and transparent. All of these elements translate into hard bottom-line savings.

Automating the expense management process, and eliminating the errors, paper and procedures that go with it, frees up employees and gives customers more control over compliance and costs. Users can quickly take a picture of receipts and submit expense claims from any mobile device to keep productivity on track.

No matter how tightly managed the customer’s travel programme is, there are always exceptions. SAP Concur provides full visibility into business travel itineraries and associated expenses. With the company’s travel and expense policy built in, our solution can help control costs, improve compliance and manage duty of care more effectively.

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All the spend data is automatically integrated to deliver the user-friendly experience employees expect and to provide full visibility into every aspect of spend, so that customers can spot new ways to save.

Q. How do you explain the recent fast growth of SAP Concur?

From a cloud perspective, what we do is exceptionally exciting. The projects we run are mostly self-funding – a recent report claims that the average SAP Concur project has a three-year ROI of 650 percent and a five month pay-back period. By the time customers go live with SAP Concur there are already significant and immediate savings on the table. This business value of SAP Concur has enabled us to grow by over 100 percent year on year and we are aiming for an additional 50 percent growth across Africa for 2019.

Q. What makes you excited about 2019?

I am exceptionally proud of the fact that we have built this local business unit from the ground up to what is a significant contributor to the greater SAP Africa family. The SAP Concur team is passionate, committed and dedicated to evangelising the untouchable awesomeness that is our cloud and mobile app.

On a personal note, I am super excited to visit a couple of new countries as we expand into East, West and Southern African territories. l

GOVERNANCE

CFO vs CEO

How do you compare?

The C-Suite are the top earners of the corporate world, but what is the income ratio between CFOs and CEOs? CFO South Africa looked at annual reports in a range of sectors where both the CFO and CEO had completed a full year of work in the company’s financial year to discover just where CFO salaries are pitched.

By Georgina Guedes and Caylynne Fourie

Banking Absa Jason Quinn, CFO

Maria Ramos, CEO*

Salary: R4,793,007

Salary: R8,130,855

Role-based pay: -

Role-based pay: R6,500,000

Medical aid: R90,732 Pension: R392,593 Other employee benefits: R32,981 Total fixed remuneration: R5,309,313

44% of CEO income

Medical aid: R106,476 Pension: R175,000 Other employee benefits: R46,981 Total fixed remuneration: R14,959,312

Total variable remuneration: R8,000,000

Total variable remuneration: R15,000,000

Total: R13,309,313

Total: R29,959,312

* In January, Maria Ramos announced her retirement from Absa, as of end-February.

Capitec André du Plessis, CFO Guaranteed pay: R8,170,000 Benefits: R77,000 Short: R3,118,000 Long: R30,228,000 Total: R41,593,000 36

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73% of CEO income

Gerrie Fourie, CEO Guaranteed pay: R10,625,000 Benefits: R78,000 Short: R4,049,000 Long: R41,641,000 Total: R56,644,000

As a founder of Capitec, CFO AndrĂŠ du Plessis earns 73 percent of CEO Gerrie Fourie's income.

FirstRand Bank Harry Kellan, CFO Guaranteed: R6,921,000 Short: R10,000,000 Long: R9,500,000 Total: R26,421,000

46% of CEO income

Johan Burger, CEO Guaranteed: R10,230,000 Short: R27,348,000 Long: R19,500,000 Total: R57,078,000

Oil and Gas Sasol Paul Victor, CFO Salary: R5,360,000 Total salary & benefits: R8,611,000 Short term: R4,951,000 Long term: R4,538,000

49% of CEO income

Total: R18,100,000

Stephen Cornell, CEO Salary: R12,583,000 Total salary & benefits: R25,833,000 Short term: R9,291,000 Long term: R2,107,000 Total: R37,231,000

Wescoal Holdings Limited Izak van der Walt, CFO Remuneration: R2,368,000 Medical & provident fund contributions: R65,000 Annual bonus: R320,000 Fringe & other benefits: R102,000 Total: R2,855,000

55% of CEO income

Waheed Sulaiman, CEO Remuneration: R3,683,000 Medical & provident fund contributions: R120,000 Annual bonus: R1,100,000 Fringe & other benefits: R215,000 Total: R5,118,000

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GOVERNANCE

Sacoil Holdings (now Efora Energy Ltd) Damain Matroos, CFO Salary: R2,966,000 Other benefits: R108,000 Discretionary bonus: R154,000 Total: R3,228,000

46% of CEO income

Thabo Kgogo, CEO Salary: R3,933,000 Other benefits: Discretionary bonus: R328,000 Total: R4,261,000

Mining AngloGold Ashanti Christine Ramon, CFO Salary: R8,423,000 Performance-related pay: R4,607,000 Pension: R727 000 Other: R1,627,000

54% of CEO income

Total: R15,384,000

Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, CEO* Salary: R13,318,000 Performance-related pay: R8,382,000 Pension: R3,296,000 Other: R3,388,000 Total: R28 384 000

* Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan left AngloGold Ashanti and was replaced by Kelvin Dushnisky in September 2018.

African Rainbow Minerals Mike Arnold, FD Salary: R4,917,000 Pension: R405,000 Allowances: R120,000 Accrued bonus: R5,350,000 Total: R10,793,000

81% of CEO income

Mike Schmidt, CEO Salary: R6,741,000 Pension: R456,000 Allowances: R153,000 Accrued bonus: R6,022,000 Total: R13,372,000

Christine Ramon, CFO of AngloGold Ashanti, earned 54 percent of CEO Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan's income in the 2017 financial year.

For a global operator, this is in line with international trends that see CFOs earning around 50 percent of what their CEOs do.

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Food Producers Tongaat Hulett Murray Munro, CFO* Cash package: R4,880,000 Cash bonus: R2,884,000 Retirement & medical contributions: R727,000 Total: R8,491,000

51% of CEO income

Peter Staude, CEO* Cash package: R8,799,000 Cash bonus: R6,626,000 Retirement & medical contributions: R1,276,000 Total: R16,701,000

* Peter Staude retired as CEO in October 2018, and Sydney Mtsambiwa has stepped in as interim CEO. Murray Munro stepped down as CFO in August 2018 to take extended medical leave. Rob Aitken is currently acting CFO.

Astral Foods Daan Ferreira, CFO

Chris, Schutte CEO

Salary: R2,956,000

Salary: R6,420,000

Fund contributions: R457,000 Travelling & other: R36,000 Long-term incentives: R2,190,000 Annual incentive bonus: R3,567,000

43% of CEO income

Fund contributions: R993,000 Travelling & other: R20,000 Long-term incentives: R6,180,000 Annual incentive bonus: R7,747,000

Long service awards: R173,000

Long service awards: R245,000

Total: R9,379,000

Total: R21,605,000

Clover Frantz Scheepers, CFO Basic salary: R3,397,000 Retirement & medical contributions: R452,000 Other benefits: R132,000

62% of CEO income

Total: R3,981,000

Johann Vorster, CEO Basic salary: R5,500,000 Retirement & medical contributions: R628,000 Other benefits: R283,000 Total: R6,411,000

Crookes Brothers Gregory Veale, group FD Salary: R1,939,000 Retirement & medical contribution: R384,000 Other benefits: R96,000 Total: R2,419,000

66% of CEO income

Guy Clarke, group MD Salary: R3,058,000 Retirement & medical contribution: R454,000 Other benefits: R180,000 Total: R3,692,000

GOVERNANCE

Retail Mr Price Mark Blair, CFO*

Stuart Bird, CEO*

Salary: R3,960,000

Salary: R6,271,000

Motor benefits: R355,000 Pension contributions: R850,000 Other benefits: R484,000 Short-term incentives: R6,791,000 Dividends: R905,000

63% of CEO income

Motor benefits: R236,000 Pension contributions: R1,281,000 Other benefits: R737,000 Short-term incentives: R10,755,000 Dividends: R1,404,000

Long-term incentives: R6,123,000

Long-term incentives: R10,185,000

Total: R19,468,000

Total: R30,869,000

The Spar Group Mark Godfrey, FD Salary: R4,042,000 Performance-related bonus: R3,022,000 Retirement funding contributions: R481,000 Travel allowance: R476,000

Graham O'Connor, CEO

84% of CEO income

Salary: R5,850,000 Performance-related bonus: R4,374,000 Retirement funding contributions: R687,000 Travel allowance: R468,000

Share options gains: R1,589,000

Share options gains: -

Total: R9,610,000

Total: R11 379 000

TFG Anthony Thunstrรถm, CFO* Benefits: R972,900 Guaranteed pay: R4,999,500 Short-term insurance: R 3,436,100 Long-term insurance: R8,432,100

45% of CEO income

Total: R16,867,700

Doug Murray, CEO* Benefits: R1,733,700 Guaranteed pay: R10,599,600 Short-term insurance : R11,923,100 Long-term insurance: R15,170,500 Total: R37,693,200

* Doug Murray retired in September 2018 and was replaced by CFO Anthony Thunstrรถm. In January this year, the role of CFO was filled by Bongiwe Ntuli, ex-CEO of Grindrod Freight Services.

Clicks Michael Fleming CFO Guaranteed: R5,220,000 Short term: R2,186,000 Long term: R25,883,000 Total variable pay: R28,069,000 Total: R33,289,000 40

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52% of CEO income

David Kneale, CEO Guaranteed: R9,600,000 Short term: R6,031,000 Long term: R48,000,000 Total variable pay: R54,031,000 Total: R63,631,000

In the 2017/18 financial year, Anthony Thunström, TFG CFO, earned 45 percent of stalwart CEO Doug Murray's income. However, earning potential is clearly not an indicator of CEO readiness, as Anthony has now taken over as CEO from Doug.

CFO and CEO income trends • There was a significant range in the ratio between CFO and CEO salaries from as low as 40 percent to as

high as 80 percent. Each of the outliers had a story to tell however. For instance, Absa CFO Jason Quinn earned 45 percent of Maria Ramon's income, as he's only recently taken up the role, and she is one of South Africa's leading CEOs and a woman to boot.

• Spar's Mark Godfrey and ARM's Mike Arnold earned 84 percent and 81 percent of their CEOs' incomes

respectively. These relatively high proportions are an indication of the significant lengths of time they have spent in their roles.

• On average, CFO salaries were around 59 percent of CEO salaries across the companies surveyed. l

CFO salaries under the spotlight The Michael Page South Africa Salary Survey 2019 revealed the average salaries for finance professionals in smallto-medium enterprises and multinational corporations.

Small-to-medium enterprise

Multinational corporation

From

Average

To

From

Average

To

R2.5 million

R3 million

R3.5 million

R3.5 million

R4.75 million

R6 million

“Salaries and bonuses have tended to follow a consistent pattern over the past five years, with steady increases to reflect inflationary pressures. In the current market, there are a number of candidates with niche skill sets or relevant experience who are able to command higher salaries, due to a low supply of talent,” says Lars Fischer, operating director, Michael Page Africa.

Lars also had some words of optimism for 2019: “With the economic stimulus package announced in September 2018 and a heightened commitment to attract foreign investment, we are expecting a positive economic impact on the GDP growth and the unemployment rate for 2019. While the majority of sectors remain under pressure, significant drivers for a more positive development will come from the banking and financial services, IT and transportation sectors.”

COMMUNITY

CFOs Care:

Why Brett and Candice Tromp support Orient Hills Day Care Discovery Health CFO Brett Tromp and his wife, CA Candice Tromp, help the Orient Hills Day Care in their personal capacity. Their support of the school is underscored by a deep understanding that for a nation to flourish, children need to learn through play from a very early age. Orient Hills Day Care provides that opportunity for 72 children.

By Georgina Guedes

O Photos: Lizelle Furter

n a narrow, insignificant road that leads from nowhere much to somewhere else lies the small Magaliesberg village of Orient Hills. In the village, poverty is high and employment rates are low, but for the families who live there, a vibrant and well-structured preschool may just give their children the foundation they need to make something more of their lives.

The Orient Hills Day Care is a Play-with-a-Purpose school, and its presence in the village is made possible because of fund-

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raising done by Brett Tromp and Candice together with the Project Orient team.

“We’ve been visiting the school for 10 years, and about six years ago, they were getting to the stage where they had lost a lot of sponsorship. The person running the school approached us to help them to find more sponsors,” says Candice. “A friend of mine, Lauren suggested we do a high tea to try and raise funds for the school, so I joined to help.”

That first fundraiser brought in R113,000 for the school. “It really helped us to keep the school

running. We decided that we couldn’t just do it as a once off, so it became an annual fundraiser for us.”

Establishing Project Orient They have continued to run the project in their personal capacities – Candice is a CA herself, and she helps run the fund – and they actively and continuously fundraise among their friends and associates, to keep the school running from year to year.

They’ve brought in well over R1 million in the past six years. A fundraiser towards the end of

Brett and Candice Tromp often visit Orient Hills to spend time with the children and see how their fundraising is making a difference.

Photographs of the children were published with the permission of their parents and the school.

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2018 brought in R250 000 alone.

Despite their effectiveness at fundraising, their model has taken some refinement.

“We were originally asking people to sponsor a child for R360 per month, but that turned out to be just too much of a commitment for people. So two years ago, we reduced it to R120 per child per month, and we got more people involved. It worked brilliantly. This year we upped the sponsorship to R150 per child a month, and the response has been good,” Candice explains.

Brett says that Candice deserves a lot of the credit for the administration of the fundraising efforts. “But it’s not just me,” she points out.

FIND OUT MORE… To learn more about Project Orient, the volunteers, staff, children and some of their most recent projects, visit their Facebook page www. facebook.com/pg/ProjectOrient.

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“There are two other ladies who help me – I help them, actually.

We are a great team. Lauren is the organiser, I am the fundraiser and Janet is the creative person.”

They provide sponsors with photos of the child that their money is supporting and regular updates on the school, which gives them a sense of actually helping an individual rather than an institution.

“We want people to feel that they are part of a longer-term vision, rather than just donating once-off because that doesn’t make anything sustainable. This school doesn’t have a revenue source other than people willing to partner with it in the long term,” says Brett.

Why sponsor early childhood development?

Keeping a school like this running is no small feat, and over the years.

The fruits of the Tromps’ labour have been made manifest in a bright and happy learning environment for children from playgroup

to Grade R. This isn’t some shabby and tired space, but a well-considered school with quality learning aids and dedicated teachers.

This is the philosophy of the Playwith-a-Purpose education group.

With funding, they establish schools in communities like Orient Hills, to deliver the children a quality preschool education that primes their minds, bodies and characters for the challenges and opportunities for later schooling.

Brett explains that various studies have shown that much of the groundwork for future learning success is laid at the formation phase between two and six years old. “Children that don’t start learning and playing the right sort of games at those ages just don’t do as well later. So to make a real difference in South Africa, you have to start at grassroots. You can’t just enter at any point. You have to build a foundation.”

Robyn Wienand, founder of Playwith-a-Purpose, affirms the value of an intervention in early child-

hood. “If we reach these young children they have a 70 percent less chance of committing a violent crime. There’s a 30 percent higher return on investment if you reach a child at preschool age than if at primary school, high school or university level. That’s a huge return.”

She adds that the impact on the economy can be measured, and that children who have received a positive preschool intervention are less reliant on social grants.

Part of the school’s philosophy is to ensure that the children have a nutritious meal every day to support healthy growth and learning. The school has a kitchen and employs a cook, who follows a meal plan that ensures they receive the correct mix of brain-growing nutrients and energy-giving foods.

Contributing to nation-building It’s clear that the school is a massive undertaking – and Brett and Candice support another one like it as well. Why would a CFO and

his wife get so actively involved not just in fund raising but in ensuring that every aspect of the school has the funding and support it needs?

“It stems from a deep sense of the need for vitally important preschool education,” says Brett. “There are these forgotten communities of people that literally have one tap for the whole community and no electricity. How do you get them to have a chance in life? Children are left at home with a caregiver, who is usually a grandmother. With schools like these, we can bridge the gap before they go into a government school for Grade 1.”

The benefits are obvious in the joy and competence of the children at the school. They laugh and play and engage with their educational materials, happy to be learning and to have the opportunity to play safely in an open space. The advancement that they make is clear from the progression of the learning materials from the first year to the Grade R class. These children have received an early education in a loving environment

and are more than ready to tackle the challenges that the world will throw at them.

And this, says Brett, is the point.

“I love South Africa deeply but the country has many weaknesses. I don’t think you get to live in a country like this without finding a way to serve. I want to make South Africa a better place. I have my personal beliefs as a Christian, which are deeply entrenched in our lives, but we’re doing this because it just feels like the right thing to do. If you have abundance, you should be helping others. And a school like this makes it possible to truly make a difference to the future of these children, and, if we could get 100 of these schools up and running, we’d start to see a difference in the country.” l

We want to tell your story Are you a CFO who champions a charitable cause in your own time? Contact John Deane at jdeane@cfo.co.za and tell your peers about it.

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FDs in conversation: Thebe’s Refiloe Nkadimeng and Alba Schabort of TreasuryONE

The future is now.

Are CFOs ready?

In November CFO South Africa hosted a CFO Summit themed “Tomorrow, today”, challenging finance execs to consider how prepared they are for the future.

T

he November 2018 CFO Summit brought the year to an optimistic end as some of South Africa’s leading CFOs shared their visions for the future.

The event took place at the Equinox Innovation Centre in Sandton, where CFOs committed to participating in knowledge sharing, future gazing and networking opportunities.

Dis-Chem CFO Rui Morais and Standard Bank Group FD Arno Daehnke kicked off the evening with a panel discussion. They shared their secrets to shaping strategies for whatever the future might hold.

Arno’s first point was that it is essential to establish how the future is defined.

“Tomorrow can blur quite easily. Is it this year’s bud-

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get, or a longer-term future? What we’ve embraced at Standard Bank is defining tomorrow in three horizons: the immediate year, year one to four, and beyond year four.”

People matters Rui raised the topic of client-centricity, saying that much of this is supported by technology. Arno echoed this, saying that when it comes to client-centricity, in the past, banks have struggled, having set up their products in a production line approach. Then, along came Apple, Amazon and Facebook, and showed people what customer-centricity really looked like.

“Now banks are rushing to deliver a true client experience. They need analytics, AI, machine learning, the power of computing, the cloud, big data, and they need

Phillip van Huyssteen (Africa Healthcare) and Tiisetso Tsiki (Halls Financial Services) in discussionon here

THANKS TO CFO SOUTH AFRICA’S EVENT PARTNERS Dis-Chem Pharmacies CFO Rui Morais and Standard Bank FD Arno Daehnke shared their insights

to mine that data. Banks are pivoting and finance is leading that,” Arno said.

Arno raised the point that in the past, when the bank recruited people, they would have considered academic track record, “but now it’s much more about scenario-based analysis. How people think and conduct themselves in a stressful environment. We use and rely heavily on psychometric testing. If there are people who do well in interviews and the psychometric test says that they are not the right person, I have committed to myself to step away.”

Rui agreed with this outlook and added that broader corporate culture was also evolving.

“When we listed, we pitched to international investors in the States and in two separate meetings when the prospectus was out, there were no finance questions.

They asked us about morality, culture, social impact for an hour. Usually in a meeting I have a lot to say but I walked out of there having hardly said anything.”

Brilliant breakaways In her presentation after the panel discussion, Bidvest audit executive Lauren Berrington echoed the sentiment that attitude counts for as much as qualification.

“I had a team who was smart and wanted to be a part of the future. They were pioneers rather than victims. The takeaway is to use what you’ve got. There’s a YouTube video for everything you need to do out there. For me, the characteristic more than qualification was resource-

Underscoring their commitment to creating a knowledge network for CFOs, Ansarada, Oracle and EY partnered with CFO South Africa in making the event possible.

fulness – not being afraid to do hard graft and research."

A2X CFO Otsile Matheba responded to Lauren’s presentation of Alice, an audit bot who is able to conclude the 241 audits it took her team two and a half years to do, every day.

“I work at a startup and we’ve had the chance to build the finance function from scratch. You’ve given me the idea that our internal audit function could be fully robotic. It’s an idea I will definitely take with me.”

Chair of digital business at Wits Business School Brian Armstrong hosted another session where he highlighted the reality of job losses to these exact solutions. He said: “I’ve read 307 research papers on this and the good news for people at the top spots is that those in leadership, creative roles, celebrities and personal brands will stay at the top of the pile. Those doing fact-heavy analyses and routine knowledge work will find that their jobs are dramatically automated.”

The Creative Leadership Collective founder Paul Steenkamp then explained that to drive innovation among staff, a sense of psychological safety needs to be present in the business.

“People need to know that the rug isn’t going to be pulled out from under them. Applying a customer-centric mindset to employees tends to generate a much more customer-centric attitude to your real customers.

If the trajectory of employment engagement levels is good, then it’s a lead indicator for good innovation outcomes.” l

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MEET THE TWO JACO MARITZ CFOs Anyone doing a Google search for “Jaco Maritz, CFO” would be surprised to discover that there are two such individuals – one working at Syspro and the other at Acacia Mining. Other than their names, the two finance professionals also have in common their studies at the University of Pretoria – they overlapped for a year in 1994, but never met. CFO South Africa got them in the same room to clear up once and for all, who's who in the Jaco Maritz zoo. By Beth Amato When Jaco Maritz, Syspro CFO, and Jaco Maritz, Acacia CFO, arrived at CFO South Africa's Bryanston offices, they were introduced for the first time. They were both pleased to meet another finance professional with the same name, but their discussions revealed no common ancestor that they could identify.

Jaco (Syspro) said that he was named after his father and his grandfather, while Jaco (Acacia) was given his name because his father was called Jacobus and his mother was called Jacomin. So it’s clear that this was not the first time that either of the CFOs had been in the same room with other people called Jaco Maritz or something like it. Nonetheless, it was a landmark meeting for the two CFOs and they both came away with a twinkle in their eye.

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Jaco Maritz, Syspro CFO, hanging out

Photos: Ter Hollmann

with Jaco Maritz, Acacia Mining CFO

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JACO MARITZ, SYSPRO CFO 1. How would you describe your current role?

I ensure that the financial, commercial and human resources aspects of the business are well managed.

I am ultimately responsible for Syspro’s international financial strategy and the alignment of financial and commercial management across all operations.

2. Where did you study, and when?

I studied at the University of Pretoria for my undergraduate degree in commerce between 1992 and 1994 and then did my honours in accounting through Unisa in 1995. I qualified as a chartered accountant in 1999 and completed an executive management development course through the University of Pretoria in 2002.

3. For which companies have you worked?

I did my articles at KPMG, then moved to Absa IT. I have worked for AST (now Gijima), and SilverBridge Holdings, which is an AltX-listed financial services software company. I was appointed chief financial officer of Syspro in June 2014. I am proud to have worked for South African-grown IT companies.

5. What are your hobbies outside of work?

I spend a lot of time with my family, as our time together is precious. My wife is a professional chartered accountant, with hectic working hours. Our 11- and 13-year-old children are a priority, and we love taking them camping.

6. What advice would you give your 21-yearold self?

I would rather not give my 21-year-old self any advice – I am actually afraid he would make different decisions and end up in a completely different place.

I am happy with where I have ended up and wouldn’t want to change that.

7. What do you think the future of finance in SA looks like?

I think the profession has taken a knock. The Steinhoff and KPMG crises have made us take stock and ask questions, such as “how can we be better custodians of business?”. For us to gain the trust of the public again, we need to put in place stringent financial controls and ensure our professional organising bodies are robust. It’s going to be a big challenge, but we have to rebuild ourselves from the inside out.

4. Where do you see yourself in a decade?

8. Had you heard of the other Jaco Maritz before CFO South Africa asked you?

Then I’ll be 55 (laughs) and I hope to have grown personally and professionally. I want to have achieved a lot for Syspro.

No! I did articles with a Johan Maritz though, and once our payslips got mixed up. He was ahead of me, so I was very pleased.

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JACO MARITZ, ACACIA MINING CFO 1. How would you describe your current role?

handicap). I also spend lots of time with my wife and our three young children.

I am part of Acacia Mining’s executive leadership team. Acacia Mining is a London-listed mining company, with gold mines in Tanzania and exploration properties across Africa. I oversee financial reporting, treasury, supply chain functions, planning and information technology. I ensure that investor relations, business development and operations are aligned.

6. What advice would you give your 21-yearold self?

2. Where did you study, and when?

I studied accountancy at the University of Pretoria between 1994 and 1997.

3. For which companies have you worked?

I did my articles with PwC in Pretoria, and then joined Placer Dome – a Canadian mining company which had invested in the South Deep gold mine.

I spent three years working from South Deep and then moved to Toronto in Canada where I worked for Barrick Gold. In 2010, I began working at Acacia Mining Plc.

4. Where do you see yourself in a decade?

At 53, I’ll definitely still be in a corporate business and part of an executive team.

I’d tell him to join an industry that’s interesting and challenging and a business where you can make a meaningful contribution. I think it’s important to hold business leaders accountable, especially in terms of ensuring the growth and development of their employees. Now I know that if you see potential in a person, they can be thrown in the deep end and do well. Importantly, I’d encourage a lifelong worklife balance.

7. What do you think the future of finance in SA looks like?

South Africa has huge potential with abundant natural resources and passionate people. With ongoing technological change, I believe it will be important for finance professionals to lead change, enhance margins in a competitive market, and to ensure strong governance structures.

5. What are your hobbies outside of work?

8. Had you heard of the other Jaco Maritz before CFO South Africa asked you?

I enjoy mountain biking and a round of golf with friends and family (although I won’t disclose my

I knew he was out there, but I had obviously never met him. l

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&

FLYING HIGH

STAYING

GROUNDED

Comair FD Kirsten King wasn’t aiming for career lift-off when she joined the aviation and travel company, but her hard work and dedication saw her taking to the runway. Together, she and the operator of kulula.com, as well as an airline under the British Airways livery as part of a licence agreement, are reaching great heights. Georgina Guedes chatted to her about how she’s navigating this.

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GROWTH XX

W

hen you are an audit manager at PKF (now merged with Grant Thornton), and you’re going through a divorce, and you want to simplify your life, what do you do?

Well, if you’re Kirsten King, you take on the job of revenue auditor at Southern Africa’s largest private airline operator and establish a revenue accounting system for the organisation.

“PKF were Comair’s auditors, and that’s how I met the previous financial director Yasas SriChandana. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life next – I live in Benoni, but was working in Sandton, and was now a single mom, after all. But I applied for, and was appointed to, the position of revenue auditor.”

Aligning finance with Sabre Comair had taken the decision in 2011 to implement Sabre Airline Solutions’ Customer Sales and Service reservations system, which included inventory management and check-in systems, as well as the AirVision Planning suite that provides commercial planning systems to manage aircraft scheduling pricing and revenue, as part of an aggressive strategy to improve efficiencies and increase revenue.

This step took them away from their in-house-developed systems, so how this would affect the finance function needed to be addressed.

“They speak a different language – and it’s hard to keep up with – and I had to learn all of that.”

“Prior to that British Airways International had done all the revenue accounting for the British Airways (operated by Comair) brand and kulula’s revenue accounting was very simple owing to the previous inhouse systems. Typically, back-office functions are at the back of the queue when it comes to investment, because the company has to focus on what generates revenue.

The Sabre project was coming along nicely, but finance needed to align with it, to be in a position to account for kulula revenue accurately. It was such an opportunity for me.”

Kirsten took up the role. As a CA, she knew how debits and credits worked, but knew very little about aviation. She had to have a “crash course” in the industry to learn the language and market

forces. “They speak a different language – and it’s hard to keep up with – and I had to learn all of that. Yasas had me sit in on process redefinition workshops, working out how to get Sabre to work for us optimally.”

She recalls that in the middle of all of this change, Yasas announced he was emigrating to Australia. The position of financial director became available.

“I felt a little daunted but bit the bullet and applied for the position.” And in 2014, Kirsten was appointed FD. She describes her first three years as a “baptism of fire”. Those three years have passed, but even so Kirsten says it took “blood, sweat and tears” to deliver Comair’s latest set of results, which saw the aviation company reporting a record profit of R326 million after tax for the financial year ended June 2018, and a 10 percent increase in profitability.

Chasing margins The airline business delivered a seven percent increase in revenue despite challengers in the market in the form of competitors Flysafair and Mango. Kirsten attributes this success to Comair’s aggressive fleet investment cycle.

“The aircraft are starting to pay for themselves, there’s a fuel burn saving of between 11 percent and 15 percent on a 737-800 vs a 737-400.

This means that kulula can keep its average fare down, putting pressure on other airlines in terms of fuel costs. In fact, we have had our most profitable years when the oil price is high.”

Headline earnings per share increased by four percent to 69.5c a share, from last year’s 67c per share. Kirsten says: “After 72 years of trading profitability our share price doesn’t seem to change. It’s the result of two things: there’s the perception of risk around aviation, and we’re just too small. We have to grow our business, but we can’t grow our business because there’s already excess capacity in the local market.”

Non-airline growth Because of this, Comair is turning to its non-airline business to deliver growth as it is “less risky and less capital intensive”. The non-airline business is made up of the lounges, the travel business, a training division and an IT venture, and is contributing 25 percent to Comair’s total profit before tax. Kirsten says that they are hoping to get that contribution up to 50 percent with a number of targeted expansions and investments.

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GROWTH

KIRSTEN ON THE GROUND Kirsten says that despite being fulfilled by her work at Comair, she has a lot more grey hairs.

To maintain some balance, she prioritises spending time with her 10-year-old daughter and walking her Labrador (or, she says, he walks her). She also finds that yoga benefits her mind and body – but struggles to find the time to establish a regular routine.

“I am not a great cook but I like sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine while my partner cooks. And I love reading. I read anything and everything. I can’t go to sleep without reading.

It’s how I wind down.”

“I don’t have huge ambitions because status doesn’t mean much to me – and I need to maintain a work-life balance for my family.”

Kirsten describes the IT venture as an exciting step for Comair. “We’ve embarked on a joint venture with an IT company, taking Comair’s IT budget and transferring it into a JV. The JV will provide as wide range of services with Comair initially as the anchor client, working on compliance and governance around data, and then as a second stream, will be providing IT services and operations to other corporate customers.”

The final aspect of the IT venture is to take Comair’s years of aviation related IT discipline and repackage and commercialise it as an “aviation in a box” solution, potentially for smaller aviation companies that don’t want to spend money on expensive airline software. “That will hopefully cause some disruption in the market,” Kirsten says.

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Growth in the non-airline business will allow Comair to do the capital-intensive work that they are hoping to on the airlines side. “The airline is achieving a margin of five percent after tax, which is a thin margin, hence the diversification into the non-airline business, which can potentially deliver 30 percent. If we want to keep our fleet replacement cycle at its optimum, we need to be closer to a 10 to 15 percent margin, which is hard to crack, no matter how hard we work,” says Kirsten.

New horizons When asked where to from here, Kirsten says it’s difficult to say, “because I didn’t expect to get here in the first place. I don’t have huge ambitions because status doesn’t mean much to me – and I need to maintain a work-life balance for my family.”

Kirsten says that it’s important to her to add value to society – “even a little bit”. “I want to give something back and figure out where to become more valuable to other people rather than focusing on my own ambitions. So right now, I am trying to figure out how to do that.” l

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GROWTH

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Give the CMO a seat at the table – they deserve it Veronique Filip is the customer and marketing leader for Deloitte Africa, a consulting and leadership role that is pushing the redefinition of marketing as a core revenue function. It’s a role perfectly suited to Veronique’s energy and passion – and she brings to it over 25 years of experience. By Kate Ferreira

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eronique hails from France and worked in marketing in Europe and the United States before the opportunity to bring her marketing strategy building expertise to Africa presented itself. Today, she speaks glowingly of not just her adopted home, but the massive potential inherent in Africa.

“I was lucky in my career, in that I often found myself creating a new marketing department for a company, or driving expansion into new markets. And I was able to inform new models, rather than forcing a foreign model on a Middle East and Africa (MEA) market – so it was marketing with a focus on growth and expansion,” she says.

“I was creating not just a campaign strategy but brand expansion plans and customer experience plans. So I began to think maybe I should be joining a consulting brand. I approached Deloitte in Luxembourg where I was working at the time, and told them I think chief marketing officers (CMOs) need advice, that they are struggling with their growth ambition, and that marketing agencies are not helping sufficiently with strategy. Deloitte were already consulting to CMOs in London but not so much Europe and that's how we started nine years ago.”

“I was excited because in Europe you can help take a company from, say, N to Z. But in Africa many of the opportunities start from the beginning.”

South Africa beckons When a major logistics company in South Africa approached Deloitte for a marketing expert five years ago, Veronique got the call to spend three months consulting locally. But before the quarter was up, Deloitte offered her the chance to stay here and she responded “Why not?”.

“I was excited because in Europe you can help take a company from, say, N to Z. But in Africa many of the opportunities start from the beginning. I began to see the continent as the next China. And I had seen firsthand the mistakes that international companies make

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“It costs five to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep one. And many more great managers are missing the opportunity of that loyalty.” when they bring in their strategy wholesale without localising it.”

use this to continue to drive growth beyond the acquisition phase.

This positivity extends to the local team she leads. “We have a variety of professional backgrounds in the team and everyone is passionate. I believe that clients can feel that. As a team, we talk about the latest articles together, instead of talking about sport.”

“What keeps me awake at night is that I believe no one is leveraging customer experience the way they should be.

The companies that are doing the best job here are probably e-business because they have less things to change and less touchpoints. Older and established businesses need to transform to be customer centric. And if you change your customer experience, you can make more money.”

Veronique describes the move as a leap of faith that paid off. “I really love it here. I think the people in this country are fantastic. I'm originally from the south of France and half of my family is Italian, so I have warm blood. Now I am a permanent resident and I'm waiting for my South African ID.”

Customer insight It is key, Veronique argues, to recognise that marketing is not what it was decades ago. The role has evolved from one of purely communications, and she wants to help or direct CMOs to embrace the evolution towards a growth focus, despite the difficulties of making this change.

“It’s a massive shift for the CMO, many of whom, if they are looking at growth at all, were only looking at lead generation and giving the sales team the best leads possible. For me that's not the best definition of the marketing. It costs five to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep one. And many more great managers are missing the opportunity of that loyalty. If you stop at the lead generation, you are not getting the opportunity to develop that loyalty or reactivate old accounts, or look at the lifecycle of a client and how are we going to grow that.”

This is one of her central calls to action: that as a modern CMO, you need to step out of your comfort zone – not just in creating the brand or campaign strategy, but in moving to orchestrating the brand expansion, and getting to grips with data analytics. With the latter, and the genuine insight into customers it can offer, CMOs can 58

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Having new ways to mine your data and new market research techniques will help companies not just to know the needs of their clients but to understand why they have these needs. “Customer insight needs to be situated with the CMO, and our research shows that 50 percent of global CMOs do not have this. Your brand is only as good as your customer experience. You need to understand why people value your brand and what the optimal customer experience is for them. The ‘why’ is very important: you need to know not just that someone will recommend you, but why they will recommend you.

It needs to be granular.”

Seat at the table This, she admits, is a completely different way of thinking about the marketing function, and may involve reinvesting in human resources; reinvesting in how you reward your customer-facing people. It includes a shift from decreasing cost to increasing revenue. “In this way the CMO becomes a financial enabler, a revenue enabler.

Today a lot of CFOs are keen to support the CMO, and see them as an important partner to the CFO and CEO. “I want to implore companies to give the CMO a chance to be a core driver. Believe in them, give them a little bit of time, but give them a seat at the table – you really can make money from customer experience. A CMO can be that change agent. This is the core message that I would love to give a group of CEOs and CFOs.” l

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GROWTH

Notes from the Barry Curtin was appointed as Dimension Data’s CFO without ever having worked in the finance department, and with little time to settle into the role. This is the story of how he felt he was sinking, then swam to success. By Georgina Guedes

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arry spent much of his first 12 months as CFO trying to come to grips with a complex portfolio and ever-changing internal environment while the industry was going through dramatic transformation. He was young, untested, and facing organisational challenges; but the talent and grit that his predecessors had seen in him carried him through. He’s now been six years in the role and reports that his professional – and personal – life is running much more smoothly!

Barry had completed his articles at KPMG but found auditing unfulfilling. He headed to London and spent three years working at various banks, including Goldman Sachs, in roles with a focus on management accounting, financial planning and analysis. He then took five months off to travel through parts of South East Asia, Africa and the Far East.

“Those travels were a very introspective time for me.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in my career, but I had a sense that I wanted to live in South Africa. I was at a career crossroads, feeling a little underwhelmed by financial services. So, after my travels, I started marketing myself to come back to South Africa, but every single job opportunity presented to me was banking-related.”

He argued with the recruitment agents who were putting him forward for these roles, however, their response was that they couldn’t market him for something he hadn’t done before. Frustrated, Barry returned to South Africa, despite not having a concrete offer and opportunity on the table.

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A chance meeting Then, fate intervened.

“I bumped into a friend at a wedding. He said to me that if I didn’t consider a role at Dimension Data, I could consider our friendship over! I wasn’t sure about a career in the IT industry but was open to discussing it further.

I’d always admired Dimension Data from a distance, but when I went in for a discussion, and saw that all the buildings were named after sporting venues – and I am passionate about sports – I thought, ‘This is a fit!’”

Barry met with the then-CFO, Sean Joubert, and was offered a role in the finance department. He proposed to rather take on a commercial role instead and joined Dimension Data in commercial finance, where he worked for three and a half years under the mentorship of a good friend, John King.

Sean later became the MD of the company, and one day in 2012 at 7am, Barry received a phone call from him.

“I thought I’d done something wrong. He never phoned me!”

Sean asked Barry to meet with him, and when Barry came in, asked the question that would change the course of Barry’s life: “Would you like to apply to be the CFO of Dimension Data?”

Barry was understandably surprised at this out-of-theblue offer. “It was an intimidating proposition – I hadn’t come through finance, hadn’t been in the company that long, didn’t know the reporting systems or processes, and didn’t know the finance team very well,” he says.

“I had built up quite good credibility, having been involved in some of the biggest commercial deals that Didata had done at the time across some of the businesses.”

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Sports: bringing people together Barry plays touch rugby on Mondays, goes to a “cross-fit type” gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, plays tennis on Wednesdays and plays golf on some weekends. He also plays cricket four or five times a year and ran the Comrades and Two Oceans Marathon last year.

“I am very active and interested in and exposed to a lot of sports,” he says. “If you went into my Twitter profile, you’ll quickly see that I follow a lot of sports journalists and that sport is a passion of mine.”

If he was ever to consider an industry change and a move away from IT, he indicates that he may be interested in exploring opportunities in the sport and wellness industry. Dimension Data, however, does have a rich heritage and association with sport.

“I’d always admired Dimension Data from a distance, but when I went in for a discussion, and saw that all the buildings were named after sporting venues – and I am passionate about sports – I thought, ‘This is a fit!’”

But Sean presented a compelling argument. “We don’t want a grey-haired, scars-on-his-back, experienced guy. I am that guy. I’ve done it for 10 years. We want someone who’s worked in the business and been in the market in front of clients, negotiating and working on deals.”

Barry recalls: “He wanted someone young to challenge the status quo, to take a fresh look at the portfolio. He wanted someone in touch with the business, who had a strong relationship with the sales teams and general managers. And I had built up quite good credibility, having been involved in some of the biggest commercial deals that Didata had done at the time across some of the businesses.”

After a thorough vetting process, Barry was offered and accepted the role.

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“Because of our history and love of sport, we’re now developing various technology solutions to enhance the viewing experience, exposure and enjoyment across various sporting codes and events, most notably the Tour De France cycling race.”

He says that he believes that sport is one of two things that breaks down barriers between people (the other is music). “Irrespective of nationality, gender, age, background or colour, when building relationships with clients, colleagues and suppliers, I believe a love and appreciation of sport brings people closer together.”

Six months in, a senior colleague and friend popped in to check up on him late one evening.

“I had spreadsheets everywhere,” recalls Barry. “He looked at me and said, ‘Are you OK?’ And I said, ‘No, I am actually trying to see how I can exit this role gracefully without disappointing anyone!’ And he responded, ‘Absolutely no ways are you going to resign. I won’t allow it!’”

A period of change While Barry is candid about having felt overwhelmed as he earned his stripes, he says that those first 12 months were particularly challenging because Dimension Data was going through a period of significant change internally, with an industry grappling with new technologies, the rise of cloud computing and different ways in which clients wanted to consume IT Services.

“Within the first year I had to deal with a large restructure resulting in retrenchments. We also had to implement and execute on a new global strategy while reviewing our overall geographic presence and business model across the Africa and Middle East operations. But most importantly, I had to earn the trust and respect from the broader Dimension Data finance community, win over a senior and experienced executive team while managing various tough and demanding stakeholders, both internally and externally.”

At the end of that first year, Barry’s father-in-law recommended that he write down everything he had learnt throughout that year. “So I did, and it was amazing to see how far I’d come in the role and how much I had covered in terms of scope and experience.”

This list-making process has now become part of Barry’s personal tradition, and every year, he does the same exercise. “The learning curve will never again be as steep as it was in those first 12 months, but it’s a valuable measure of ongoing professional growth and development.”

“Now, six years down the line, I’m much better in terms of managing my workload and I am more equipped for what the role entails. The business is a lot more stable now that we’ve done the tough things.”

In his time as CFO, Barry lists his achievements as the creation of a finance shared service centre, roll out of a new Global ERP template, rationalisation of the business portfolio through the sale and wind down of underperforming regions and businesses, and the successful investment and implementation of Robotics, Business Process Automation, and reporting dashboards.

“Critically, I believe I have surrounded myself with a very capable and talented team that is aligned on what we are executing on and have a strong affinity for the company they work for – that’s how you create real shareholder value!”

The business has changed markedly over the years with acquisitions successfully integrated, rebranded

and performing well. And there has been a significant turnaround in profitability across all of Dimension Data’s business units.

“There are three to five candidates in this group who have progressed through the business and who could, in time, step into my role.”

Strategy and succession Barry has also invested and focused on a succession plan. “There are three to five candidates in this group who have progressed through the business and who could, in time, step into my role and it would be seamless. I am a strong believer in promoting from within.”

Barry says he remains very committed to Dimension Data’s current strategy, which will be measured at the end of 2020, at which time he would have been in the role for eight years. He believes it will be a good time to reassess his career options and ambitions as he is conscious not to stagnate in the role, and that fresh thinking and new blood may be good for the company.

“At some point, it will be time for someone else to do this role. With Dimension Data now being a significant global company with a presence in over 51 countries around the world, along with recent exciting announcements and developments with NTT, the parent company, I believe there will be opportunities within the group that will challenge me and enhance my professional development. l

Family values Barry’s children are now seven, five and three years old.

“In that first year, the balance was way out. I couldn’t leave work at the office, so it was quite a stressful time. My wife was very supportive, but she did ask me if I was sure that I was going to come out the other side happy and sure I’d done

the right thing for my professional and personal development by taking on the role. She wasn’t concerned whether I was capable of doing it, and doing it well, but whether I was going to be happy and fulfilled doing it!”

His favourite activity to wind down after work is to take his dogs for a run at

the park in his neighbourhood, with the kids riding their bikes alongside. “This is a time where I never have my phone with me as I indulge myself with people and animals that are always happy and excited to see and spend time with me!

If I were ever to leave Joburg, one of my fondest memories of the city would be walking my dogs in the park.”

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VISION

A woman’s place is in the FinTech revolution Late payments by big corporates and government can spell disaster for small business.

But CA and entrepreneur Thandeka Zondi may just have come up with a FinTech solution that will see SMEs getting paid on time AND save large institutions money.

By Georgina Guedes

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peak to any small business owner and they will tell you that cash flow is their biggest challenge. They have to spend money to make money, but all too often, late payments from government and big business mean that there’s no money to spend and so the wheels stop turning.

Enter Thandeka Zondi, a 37-year-old chartered accountant who has hatched a plan to launch a FinTech company that supports SMEs in getting early payment from large organisations.

In her early career, Thandeka worked at the AuditorGeneral. “The AG contracts out a lot of work to black firms and one of my roles there was to work with those firms. I started engaging with them to find out what their key pressure points were. Their most urgent plea was, ‘Can you pay us sooner?’”

Then she moved to a medium-sized black firm herself, she was fascinated to see that it was facing exactly the same challenges. “It was a great business, but because its clients paid so late, it had cashflow issues every single month.”

She began to think about how to provide solutions for SMEs to reduce this strain on their cashflow. “Initially, I wanted to streamline their back office so that they would be able to get financing, but as I started to look at the processes in different ways, I began to plan a FinTech revolution.”

Laying the groundwork for success Oxford University’s Said Business School had just launched its first FinTech programme, which Thandeka gave to herself as a birthday gift. “It was very expensive, but it was a good gift. While I was doing that course, I came across digital supply chain finance, and gained an understanding of how it was gaining momentum glob-

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ally, and I wondered if it couldn’t be a solution for some of the challenges facing the small and medium-sized business sector in South Africa that I had come across.”

In South Africa, as the economic situation remains depressed, the challenges for SMEs are increasing.

“Working capital is critical, but no corporate is going to pay someone early. Suppliers are going out of business waiting for the public sector to pay. So I thought, what if I partnered with those corporates and the public sector? I would pay their suppliers early, and they could pay me later. That way, the suppliers wouldn’t struggle and would have room to maximise their own working capital.”

Unlike most businesses, Thandeka’s MoneyWorks platform has growth of SMEs and transformation as a cornerstone. The financing solutions are targeted at women or black-owned or partially black-owned SMEs. She plans to offer two solutions that will ultimately improve the working capital of SMEs. With the first solution, MoneyWorks will partner with corporates and public sector institutions to establish a facility utilising their credit credentials that will enable SMEs to apply for Early payment (EP). The SMEs will upload their invoices for services provided onto the MoneyWorks system. MoneyWorks will pay the SME the approved invoice value less an EP fee within 36 hours.

The corporates and public sector institutions will settle MoneyWorks in line with the payment terms originally applicable to the SME. “There are all sorts of costs involved in late payment, ranging from reputational to legal. For example, SMEs have gone under waiting for payment and those that can afford to have resorted to suing government for the money owed to them. Government has to respond and pay legal costs, which has seen a rise of fruitless and wasteful expenditure as a result.”

She explains that national and provincial departments and entities had R319 million of fruitless and wasteful expenditure due to penalties and interest on overdue accounts and late payment in the 2017/18 financial year.

In addition, over 30 percent of the national and provincial departments were cited by the Auditor-General as unable to pay creditors within the legislated 30 days in the 2017/18 financial year.

“This solution will reduce this number and statistic significantly if the national departments sign up with MoneyWorks because suppliers will be paid on time, which will result in a reduction in late payment interest and legal fees incurred dealing with summons.”

The second solution partners with established large and medium-sized women- or blackowned business to establish a supply chain financing facility that will enable them to extend their payment terms to suppliers. This means MoneyWorks will settle their suppliers within the 30-day payment term and they will have 60 to 90 days to pay MoneyWorks. This provides a working capital solution that until now they have not been able to access, which has constrained business growth.

“The idea behind these solutions is to be creative around growing SMEs. That’s really my passion.

This country needs to create jobs right now, and for businesses to create jobs, they need to grow, and to do that, they need cashflow,” Thandeka says.

Funding and financials Thandeka has secured start-up funding from Resultant Finance, where she sits on the board and is acting as chief operations officer.

“I proposed the idea to them and they could see how it could deliver benefits down the road.

They said, ‘We like what you are trying to do in this space, so we will give you enterprise development funding to grow this platform.’ They do asset rental financing. So they have the pipeline and the deals. We have a similar methodology for financing businesses, and the same philosophies around making sure there’s compliance.

Dr Mdu Gama, a director at Resultant Finance, has given me financing and access to his team to assist me as I build MoneyWorks,” she says.

Thandeka has an application at the Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA) to establish a fixed-income fund to support MoneyWorks.

“We’re looking at an eight to nine percent fixed income return. It’s a little better than money

Who is Thandeka Zondi?

Thandeka is a 37-year-old chartered accountant who hails from KwaZulu-Natal. “I grew up in a little town called Hammersdale. Anyone who’s ever driven to Durban knows the turn off – just after Pietermaritzburg, before the tollgate, where the chicken smell is.”

Her father is a retired truck driver, and when she was growing up, he tried out a taxi business. “The way taxis are financed is basically through a stokvel. You put money together to buy a taxi. And then next time someone else buys a taxi. I understood that there is a strength in understanding finance – in understanding the value of money and funding.

So I made a conscious decision that when I finished articles, that my solution would be to help businesses.”

She left home in 2000 to Johannesburg to study at Wits on a Deloitte scholarship to become a CA(SA). “But this concept was always in the wings. I didn’t have the words for it. But now I know what I am doing. But it doesn’t stop here. I am very ambitious. My big plan is that one day I would like to have a bank focused on SMEs in this country.”

But for now, MoneyWorks is her baby. “It’s hard work, but it’s going to be worth it,” she says.

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VISION but that doesn’t mean it’s always available. It can be dependant on someone else paying them, or on a revenue target. And if they aren’t getting paid, then they also have the cashflow challenge.”

The tech behind the revolution To find the right people to build her platform, Thandeka went to a lending conference in the United States. After considering various options, she settled on a software as a service (SaaS) platform, which “made me more comfortable, because I am not a developer. It’s robust, compliant with international best practice, and is hosted on Amazon’s cloud server, which is secure. It’s cost effective for me, and I have people to scream at if something goes wrong.”

She has partnered with TransUnion who have their own data for assessing credit risk, and combined this with other analytics so that the platform will “spit out someone who isn’t great. One corporate or public sector institution might only qualify for a R5 million facility, while others might qualify for R50 million.”

She has also partnered with DocFox to digitise the FICA requirements of running a fund and providing credit. “I am not an expert in law, someone else is,” says Thandeka. “DocFox were bought by Norton Rose Fulbright and it’s a great digital platform to have embedded into MoneyWorks. I’ve also gone to electronic signing providers and created a digital signature that’s enforceable by law in South Africa. I’ve spent the better part of the last eight months testing different technologies and putting them together in a way that makes a whole lot of sense.”

At the time of going to press, she was allowing potential buyers to come in an try the platform out, to assess whether it’s something that they would be comfortable using. market funds that are returning between 5.5 percent and 7.5 percent. R10 million in a fixed deposit account at the bank’s best rate would deliver 7.5 percent, so we’re offering an appealing proposition.”

The Fund will provide funding for the facilities to be provided on the platform to enable the supply chain finance transactions and the return will be based on the fees charged for the facilities.

The risks for the fund are reduced by the processes built into the platform that require the suppliers to the corporates and public sector institutions to enter the appropriate buyers code and for the corporate to confirm and approve the invoice prior to any payment being made by MoneyWorks.

There is limited risk for the fund in making payments for government, because despite all the delays, government generally pays in the end. “They have the budget,

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She anticipates that her licence from the FSCA will come through at the end of February 2019. “Which means I will have locked in potential buyers, completed my proof of concept and so I’ll be able to approach funders with confidence that we can actually meet the requirements. I’m looking at international and local funds, pension funds and private equity funds in particular.”

The target date for the MoneyWorks launch with the initial buyers and funders is April 2019.

MoneyWorks will also have a BBBEE angle, because as a supplier development platform, it has the credentials to qualify for funding from the two percent of net profit after tax that companies have to put aside for enterprise development.

The SME payment revolution has begun! l

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VISION

ONE

STEP AHEAD

Not long after investment entrepreneur Oksana Goncharova hatched a plan to use AI and machine learning to help smart entrepreneurs manage investment capital, she met Ansarada Founder and CEO Sam Riley. Instead of her convincing him to finance her startup, he convinced her to join the virtual dealroom company and reshape its business model.

The future of dealmaking, says Oksana, is being one step ahead and being prepared for deals and transactions at any given time. “Every day that you don’t close the deal, something can happen to your business, your country or your industry. Early preparation is your best competitive advantage.” By Joël Roerig

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ksana Goncharova is the kind of person you wish you had in your high-potential startup. She sees the future one step ahead of rest, gets organised and makes it happen. “When people see the word strategy in my title, they confuse it with theory,” says the chief strategy officer. “Strategy is about resolving daily issues, execution and staying on course to achieve the vision.”

Connecting people and driving speedy execution has always been key for Oksana (30), who hails from St Petersburg in Russia, but spent time in some of the world’s most exciting cities – Barcelona, Milan, Berlin – at a young age. “I still love travelling. I am the kind of

person that gets excited by sailing uncharted waters,” says Oksana, who added World Economic Forum, Citibank and Bain & Co to her CV in her early twenties, before joining the German startup launch platform Rocket Internet in 2011.

A year later, she was deployed to Sydney with a small startup team to launch The Iconic, an online retailer, which is now one of Australia’s largest fashion and sportswear stores, with more than 300 employees.

“We would typically get new ventures off the ground in six to 12 months and move on, but I fell in love with what we were building.

In the first few months we didn’t know whether we were going to make it. We had limited capital

“People can now build a product and business quite fast and, because capital is more democratised, get faster access to money.” and ambitious goals, which is a deliberate startup recipe. We were working out of warehouse and it has been incredible to see the baby growing up.”

In May 2016, Oksana decided to build her very own software-as-aservice startup called Rabble.

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VISION “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur myself. Fundraising is too complex, expensive and time-consuming for founders and Rabble provided an intelligent platform to manage corporate documents, fundraising and shareholder relationships.”

Prepare better and earlier The reason Oksana knocked on Ansarada’s door was to ask for capital. “But when I presented my message, the CEO Sam Riley admitted they were working on a very similar idea. He was thinking of how to expand Ansarada and use the insights from more than 25,000 transactions to bring more value to customers. He wanted to look beyond data rooms to build a platform that helps businesses to prepare better and earlier.”

Oksana joined Ansarada as the Managing Director of the Material Information Platform, but the new way of working soon became the core of what Ansarada offers its clients. “The launch of the platform spearheaded the transition of the entire business to move from a fairly nontransparent legacy pricing model of data rooms to a simple monthly subscription fee for an always-on platform.”

The smart use of AI and machine learning means a lot less time needs to be wasted. “Through our data, we have the luxury of understanding behaviours.

Dealmakers asked us to help find out which buyers are more likely to proceed with a transaction and the data allows us to make a 97 percent accurate prediction.”

Similarly, Ansarada is in a position to connect clients with the right advisors, based on historical data.

Where five years ago 80 to 90 percent of ansarada’s clients were advisors managing data rooms on a deal-by-deal basis, 60 to 70 percent of the clients now consist of corporates. “It is a mindset shift.

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Managing your documents, risks and opportunities is a process that is ongoing and doesn’t just take place when a deal is on the table.”

AI allows for standardised due diligence The future, Oksana says, is coming at speed. “Technology is developing so fast, it is hard to make predictions. What is clear is that AI technology allows for faster deals, faster capital raising and a standard set of rules that apply to due diligence. This makes dealmaking more accessible. People can now build a product and business quite fast and, because capital is more democratised, get faster access to money.”

“Every day that you don’t close the deal, something can happen to your business, your country or your industry.”

While deal advisors are currently often “really expensive translators” between various parties in the M&A scene, they won’t vanish from the scene as this “translation” is being taken over by machines, Oksana says. “To complete a deal successfully still requires insight and positioning. That’s more an art than a science. Machines make the data available and visible. The potential for dealmakers to use this to their benefit is incredible.”

Ansarada partners with other cloud-based systems like Dropbox and Google, which is also one of the biggest clients globally.

“They manage their sell side and buy side transactions on our platform. But we are just as active in, for example, the energy and mining space or real estate. These are industries that need a secure platform to run

different information flows and the companies need to be able to go quickly into a transaction if they need to divest or invest. Holding companies and asset managers have also started using the platform.”

Welcoming and warm According to the 2018 CFO Day survey, 92 percent of South African CFOs want to get more involved in dealmaking. Oksana says that “timing” is her number one tip for them. “You need to prepare early,” she says. “The longer a process drags on, the higher the risk. I know many horror stories of lastminute discoveries that ruin a good deal. By being prepared in advance, at all times, you know that the metrics are right and you can finalise the due diligence within a month, while still running your business.”

During the platform’s pilot phase, Oksana spent some time in South Africa and loved it. “People are very welcoming and warm, which is not always common in the M&A space.

At the same time, dealmakers are a bit more cautious than in the rest of the world. It takes a while for new ideas to really stick, but once you build a relationship, you build a lot of trust. In a place like the United States, people are keener to try anything. South Africans are more reflective.”

The most remarkable part of Oksana’s story is that what was once the rationale behind her own startup is now the future of Ansarada. “The vision has remained the same compared to what I wanted to build four years ago,” she says. “It is all about empowering businesses to maximise their potential, bridging the knowledge gap and helping people express the value of their business. We’re trying to connect people. In the end, everyone who works on a deal wants to succeed.” l

Seize opportunity before it knocks At Ansarada, our Material Information Platform and Data Rooms apply AI to all the critical information in your business, so you can boost transaction values, close deals quickly, and seize opportunities before your competitors. Don’t settle for the ordinary way.

Win with our way.

The ready way to do business.

Data Rooms | Deal Preparation | Material Information Platform Sandton +27 118 815 742

Stellenbosch +27 218 828 571

ansarada.com

© 2018 Ansarada Pty Limited. All rights reserved.

There’s the ready way to do business. And then there’s the wrong way. The ready way means knowing what’s coming before it arrives and being prepared for your organisation’s most crucial moments.

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VISION

QUESTIONS FOR

TRYPHOSA RAMANO

Tryphosa Ramano is an impressive yet understated business leader. She’s previously worked at RMB, SAA, WIP international and is now the CFO at PPC. Her years of experience have prepared her for the challenges of operating in multiple jurisdictions, in multiple languages and with differing tax laws, to develop a financial strategy that ensures PPC’s profitability. By Georgina Guedes

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“I don’t only need typical business controller skills and financial strategy skills, but I also need political skills and the ability to engage at different levels of government, ensuring that things are done properly.”

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VISION

1

How did you end up at PPC?

I’ve been with PPC for seven years. I was headhunted from Wiphold. At the time, there was a shortage of cement in the country, so Wiphold was importing cement, and I was driving that process, bringing in the Chinese to build a new plant. That plant is now called Mamba Cement.

There hadn’t been a new player entering the market in the last 50 years by then, so this was the first time that PPC was getting a competitor. And this competitor was becoming a disruptor. There was also the issue of transformation, and PPC’s board was looking for diversity to change the look of the organisation. I had the competencies and the skills, and there were no other women already in the sector, so it made sense for them to headhunt me.

2

What are your primary focus areas as CFO?

A CFO normally looks at business controls and financial strategy. PPC operates in more than seven countries, including Rwanda, Ethiopia, the DRC, Zimbabwe, Botswana and of course South Africa, so I sit on the boards and the audit committees of those entities, to ensure business control and governance, and that there are no surprises at the group level when it comes to consolidation. And of course, I provide leadership and governance guidance.

In terms of our financial strategy, we’ve spent close to a billion dollars in the last five years building cement plants in those countries.

So we’ve had to come up with a funding strategy for project financing. But at the same time, in South Africa after 2010, cement consumption went down. The shortage was over and we had too much capacity, and we had too much debt in the balance sheet, while we weren’t producing income in new greenfields projects in those countries.

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Our balance sheet was overgeared.

So we did a rights offer in 2016 and raised capital from shareholders to restructure the balance sheet.

Things have improved since then because the projects are now businesses in their own rights and they are repaying on the debt.

3

What are some of the complexities of operating in multiple jurisdictions?

There are many complexities that one is faced with when operating in multiple jurisdictions in multilingual countries. I will give you an example. In Ethiopia, the language is Amharic. They were using an accounting system based on their own tax laws, and have only now adopted IFRS. As you can imagine, consolidating non-IFRS accounts is very challenging. I had to assist with the IFRS migration, which is still underway. Also the AGM presentations are done in Amharic, with a translator at the meeting.

The DRC is a French-speaking country, their accounts are in French and they use OHADA for local reporting purposes. But they had to integrate with our SAP system, so we had to do their accounting first in line with the OHADA, and then again in IFRS in English. This is duplication of work – for the people on the ground and audit – as the system needs to be integrated. In addition, all board meetings are conducted in English but first we had to agree and record that they should be conducted in English. The OHADA accounts are in French and we have to sign them in French. You can imagine, if you don’t understand the language, the risks of signing something you don’t understand. You have to rely a lot on lawyers and interpreters.

There are also multiple tax regimes with different approaches in the DRC, Rwanda and Ethopia, making it very difficult to harmonise reporting. For example, in Rwanda, providing food to staff is not tax deductible, but we provide canteen facilities in our factories and our

factory in Rwanda is in a remote area where it's paramount to do so.

So I don’t only need typical business controller skills and financial strategy skills, I also need political skills and leadership skills and the ability to engage at different levels of government, ensuring that things are done properly. We make partnerships everywhere we go. So there’s a contact at country level, but when high-level delegation is required, I will get involved.

4

What is your biggest success story at the moment?

Our success story is in Zimbabwe, where we built a milling plant at a cost of approximately $80 million – close to a billion rand – to increase our milling capacity. Zimbabwe is now growing at 30 to 40 percent a year in volumes and is running out of capacity. With the political situation improving at that time, it was the right thing to do.

Although we don’t control the investment in Ethiopia, we are doing very well there. It’s the fastest-growing economy in Africa at eight to 10 percent per annum, with an infrastructure 10 to 15 years behind where we are in South Africa. And cement imports have been banned.

We started production at our 1.4 million tonnes per annum plant just over a year ago, and we sell cement three months in advance. We receive the money and then they come and collect in three months’ time because of the shortage.

“There are many complexities that one is faced with when operating in multiple jurisdictions in multilingual countries.”

Rwanda will run out of capacity by the end of 2019, and cement consumption is growing by between eight and 10 percent. The country is developing new airports, housing and roads. It’s a very nice country to operate in, with proper governance and a lot of aid from the World Bank. We’re the only producer of cement in Rwanda.

5

Are there any countries where you are currently underperforming?

We are not currently successful in the DRC. We have all the resources but the problem is that because of the political issues, most of the projects that they had committed to were stopped and the infrastructure went backwards.

Then the copper prices went down (though they have since improved).

There is overcapacity in the market with three major players, including ourselves, having approximately 2.6 million tonnes of cement per annum while the demand is approximately 1.2 million tonnes per annum.

Pricing in this competitive environment is tough.

6

How has South Africa’s market affected your global strategy?

With the South African market deterioration due to overcapacity as a result of new entrants in the market and reduced GDP growth, we saw local profitability being impacted while the group debt increased. Therefore we had to raise capital in 2016. Thereafter the board resolved to focus on delivering on business strategy and focus on capital structure, operational efficiencies and human capital optimisation. We ended up developing strategic focus called “FOH-FOUR”.

In 80 percent of markets we operate in, we’re the market leader. We need to defend that market leadership, which means being competitive in price, product and services. Our brand is crucial to this.

“I love seeing people come here as trainees, go through accreditation with SAICA, and become qualified CAs.”

7

You are very active on various women’s associations. Do you feel that it’s important to actively further the support of women in the finance and construction industries?

Women development is paramount in any economy. It should be part of the DNA of doing business. When I joined PPC, there was no women representation at executive leadership level. I realised there were no initiatives around the development of women. So I engaged a number of women managers in organisation and started the Women’s Forum in 2012, and we signed the United Nations Principles of Women Empowerment and then launched across our various sites in South Africa. Every August during Women’s Month, we hold the forum and talk among ourselves about women’s issues.

I used to be the president of the Association of Black Investment Professionals. It has a women’s chapter. In 2013, we approached Nicky [Newton-King] at the JSE to say that the only way of making sure that listed entities take women seriously is by amending the JSE rules. We engaged further, and then Nicky took it up herself with her team, and then eventually in 2014, it was required that JSE-listed companies had to report on gender policies and targets at board level.

At PPC the gender policy of board is in the integrated report.

To show how important women are in the JSE industry and then at PPC level, we established Women in

Manufacturing in 2014, but we haven’t been very active. The point for me was to develop young African women to get into the profession.

Certain women took it upon themselves to mentor me and show me the ropes, and I believe it’s my duty to pass on the same to others.

8

What inspires you?

I am inspired by development – seeing something that started as a concept through to the final outcome.

We have a CA training programme here at PPC, which was launched in 2013, and we’ve produced more than 10 CAs. It’s a great initiative, and I love seeing people come here as trainees, go through accreditation with SAICA, and become qualified CAs. We have also participated in a programme with Fordham University [in New York] where those trainees go as a part of their training. There is nothing as inspiring and motivating as a young person going to an Ivy League institution and coming back with better knowledge.

I also like gardening. I think there’s a relationship between my love of development and my love of gardening, because you tend plants from seeds until they become flowers or vegetables. It inspires me to think differently and helps me to relax. l CFO MAGAZINE • CFO.CO.ZA

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The winners of the 2018 CFO Awards

INTRODUCING THE CFO AWARDS NOMINEES 76

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André du Plessis CFO, Capitec Bank

Andre joined Capitec in 2000 as a financial manager and was appointed CFO in 2002. He specialised in the areas of business advisory, financial consulting and strategic and financial management. He served as a partner at Arthur Anderson for 10 years from 1986 to 1996 and was associated with Boland PKS as CE, financial management from 1996 to 2000. He has a B.Com Honours in accounting and finance and is a CA(SA).

Arno Daehnke Group FD, Standard Bank

Before being appointed as group finance director, Arno was the head of Standard Bank’s Treasury and Capital Management function. He has extensive experience in financial planning under varying macroeconomic scenarios, managing a complex banking group balance sheet in volatile financial markets, and a deep understanding of both local and international bank regulatory frameworks.

Prior to joining Standard Bank, Arno was one of South Africa’s leading seismologists.

This year on 8 May, at a glamorous annual event dubbed “the Oscars of the finance profession”, the 2019 winners of the prestigious CFO Awards will be announced. The winners will be selected from the finest of the finest among South Africa’s finance professionals.

Basil Sgourdos Group CFO, Naspers

Basil, a qualified chartered accountant, worked at PwC from 1989 to 1994. Thereafter he joined Naspers, initially as the finance manager of the South African operation division in MultiChoice and then as CFO of Naspers’ investment in the Thai-listed United Broadcasting Corporation Plc, for 10 years. He then spent two years in Amsterdam as general manager of pay-television business development globally, before being appointed as Group CFO of MIH in 2009. He became Group CFO of the Naspers Group in 2014.

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CFO AWARDS

Bothwell Mazarura

CFO, RH Bophelo

CFO, Kumba Iron Ore

Bothwell was previously the CFO and executive director of Wescoal Holdings. Prior to that, he held various senior financial roles at Lonmin Plc. Before his time at Lonmin, he was a partner at Deloitte, where he also spent some time working in the UK. He joined Kumba Iron Ore in 2017 as CFO. Bothwell has a B.AccSc degree from UNISA and is an accredited chartered accountant in three jurisdictions – England and Wales, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Bridget Radebe

Dion completed his auditing articles with KPMG, where he qualified as a CA(SA) and an RA. He has held advisory roles with Afripalm Resources and Sakhumnotho Holdings and has worked as a financial support manager at Thebe Investments. Dion also held a full-time senior lecturing post with UJ and his passion for working with the youth in business and corporate allows him to continue mentoring new businesses and young professionals. He was appointed as CFO of RH Bophelo in 2017.

Glenn Fullerton

CFO, Nampak

CFO, African Rainbow Capital

Before her appointment as African Rainbow Capital CFO in 2017, Bridget was a partner at Deloitte, where she serviced JSE-listed clients. She joined Deloitte Johannesburg in 2006 as a manager after an international secondment with Deloitte Canada. In her role as audit manager from 2007 to 2012, she has served a diverse range of clients and had a broad range of experience with a specific focus on the IT, wholesale, retail and hospitality industries.

Clifford Appel CFO, Department of Social Development

Clifford started his career as a senior manager for the Gauteng Department of Agriculture. After leaving his position, he gained a lot of experience in finance-related management positions. He served as the CFO of Gauteng Treasury as well as the acting CFO of Gauteng Department of Finance. In 2012, he became the CFO of the South African Social Security Agency. Clifford was appointed CFO of the Department of Social Development in 2014.

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Glenn has served as CEO and CFO of Tarsus Technology Group (then MB Technologies Ltd) and was employed in a group financial management role at Hunt Leuchars and Hepburn Ltd. He has served as divisional director of two large divisions at Kohler Ltd, and as divisional financial director of Malbak Group, where he oversaw the unbundling of the company.

Glenn has been a director of Nampak Holdings Ltd since 2015 and is currently the CFO and executive director.

Hannes Boonzaaier

Group CFO, AfroCentric

Hannes completed his articles with KPMG in 1999.

During his tenure there, he gained experience in valuations, due diligence, reviews and commercial structuring of business transactions. He joined Medscheme as a financial manager and, over the past 13 years, has been involved with Medscheme and the AfroCentric Group in various client operations. Following his success in leading Group Finance and with his knowledge of the business, he was appointed as the AfroCentric Group CFO in 2015.

Hennie Nel

Masibulele Dem

CFO, Santam

CFO, Hulisani

Hennie is a qualified CA(SA) and an associate member of CIMA. He completed his articles at PwC and became an audit manager for their Singapore and London divisions. In 2001 he was admitted as a partner in the Financial Services practice. Hennie joined Santam in September 2012. He currently serves as a director at Santam Ltd, MiWay group of companies, Centriq group of companies, Santam Structured Insurance group of companies, Sanlam Emerging Markets and FBN General Insurance. He is also a director of Santam Namibia and Indwe and Brolink, in Namibia.

Masibulele was appointed CFO of Hulisani in July 2017. He has spent 15 years with companies that include KPMG, Barclays, Standard Bank, Mazwe Financial Services and African Rising Capital. He has experience in controllership, investments and treasury, and strategy and planning. With his passion sitting firmly in the area of finance and investments, Masibulele’s particular interest is in the energy sector of sub-Saharan Africa, where the supply of energy remains a challenge.

Jason Quinn

Matthias Vogt CFO, Afrox

Group FD, Absa

Jason was appointed as Absa’s Group FD and joined the Board and Executive Committee in September 2016. He is the chairman of the Models Committee and a member of the Group Risk and Capital Management, Credit Concentration Risk, Information Technology and Separation Oversight Committees. He joined Absa in 2008 as a financial controller and was appointed as the head of finance in 2014. He was the group financial director of Barclays Africa Group Limited from 2016 to 2018.

Matthias has been the CFO and executive director of African Oxygen Ltd since August 2017, and its FD since September 2017. He has previously served as the head of finance and general manager of finance at Afrox. He joined the company in July 2015 and has been with the Linde Group, of which Afrox is a member, for nine years. Before his role as CFO, Matthias was responsible for the implementation of Global Shared Services throughout the group.

Mark Kathan CFO, AECI

Mark was appointed as AECI’s FD and CFO in 2008.

Prior to joining AECI, he was FD at Nampak and served on the company’s Group Executive Committee. In addition to overall responsibility for the Finance and Treasury functions, Mark oversees AECI’s Corporate Communications and Investor Relations, Legal and Secretariat, Internal Audit and IT functions, as well as its Retirement Funds. He also plays a leading role in M&A activities.

Nakedi Ramaphakela FD, Royal Bafokeng Holdings

Nakedi has been with Royal Bafokeng Holdings since 2012, serving as group reporting manager and group finance manager prior to her appointment as FD in July 2016. She completed her articles at PwC and afterwards served as senior associate and assistant manager. She qualified as a CA(SA) at PwC, where she afterwards served as senior associate and assistant manager. She has a Bachelor Honours degree in Accounting Science from the University of the Witwatersrand.

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COMMUNITY

THE ‘OSCARS’ OF SA FINANCE “ADAPT or DIE” feat. astrophotographer Cory Schmitz

8 MAY 2019 | JHB

Practise agile thinking to make great decisions in 2019 What decisions will you be faced with in 2019? Some will be easy but most are likely to be complex and multifaceted with more than one right answer. The mental and emotional pressure you will face when making decisions, in a time of increasing uncertainty, is enormous. Developing the skills and insights necessary to deal with this reality is perhaps some of the most important work you can do.

The Nobel-Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman made a significant contribution to our broader understanding of perception and judgement, the building blocks of decision-making, in a groundbreaking career. Perhaps the most important finding in his work was that even those with training in the statistical theory of prediction regularly make incorrect judgements when faced with high levels of uncertainty. This is because our brains simplify thinking by relying instead on a limited number of heuristics or short cuts.

BOOK YOUR

Knowing this and how to deal with it is critical to your decision-making ability.

Combining the level of uncertainty and change creates a challenge unlike any other and there are very few executives who are not intimidated by the task at hand – whether they’ll admit it or not. And when we’re faced with this level of stress we easily fall back into old habits and survival thinking, which can prove highly detrimental. But all is not lost – a recent McKinsey paper, Leading with Inner Agility, suggested there are some ways to create more agile mental and emotional practices:

SEAT

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1. “Pause to move faster” – taking time out to consider the information at hand and not deciding immediately is one of the hardest things to do when chaos is all around and it feels like time is of the essence but science has shown we make infinitely better decisions using this technique.

2. “Embrace your ignorance” – part of solving new and often unique problems lies in our ability to accept we don’t know and asking others to help us see things from different angles.

3. “Radically reframe the questions” – you can do this by diversifying your network and asking others to help you rethink the most important questions you’re wrestling. This process allows you to lift the lid on other perspectives and grow more comfortable with the unknown.

4. “Set direction, not destination” – a lot of this is about giving people around you clarity on the purpose and impact you have in mind and then empowering them to make decisions on how to get there.

5. “Test your solutions – and yourself” – this last part is closely tied to the four practices above and it is the way you can take the steps towards greater agility.

I hope that in 2019 you’ll take full advantage of the incredible learning and networking platforms that CFO South Africa offers.

Graham Fehrsen gfehrsen@cfo.co.za +27 79 898 0227

CFO AWARDS

Nolwazi Mamorare

Sizwe Nkosi

CFO, UJ

CFO, Phembani Group

Nolwazi has over 18 years’ financial experience, having served in companies including KPMG, Protekon, Land Bank, Auditor-General SA and most recently the University of Johannesburg. She was appointed as CFO of UJ in 2018. Prior to her appointment, she served as the executive director of financial governance and revenue. She has also served in senior audit manager, financial reporting manager, financial accountant and audit supervisor roles. She has a B.Com Honours degree in Accounting from the University of KZN.

Sizwe is the executive director of finance at Phembani Group. His 15 years’ experience post articles has been predominantly in mining, and includes coal, diamonds, phosphates and commodities trading. His most recent endeavour was driving the successful takeover of Metmar Ltd, where he held the Group CFO position,

by Traxys Group. He secured his CTA at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, completed his articles with EY and qualified as a CA in 2001. Sizwe also holds an MBA from the UCT Graduate School of Business.

Nonkululeko Dlamini CFO, IDC

Nonkululeko has been the CFO of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) of South Africa since September 2015. Prior to joining the IDC she was with Eskom, where she spent 14 years in various executive positions. She served as acting CFO and director of Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd until August 2015. She has been a non-executive director of Kumba Iron Ore Ltd since November 2016. She holds a B.Com from Wits and is a qualified CA(SA).

Ralph Mupita CFO, MTN

Ralph was appointed CFO of MTN in April 2017. Prior to this he held various executive and director roles at Old Mutual, including CEO of Old Mutual Emerging Markets, executive director at Old Mutual Life Assurance Company Ltd and director of Special Growth Projects for Old Mutual Life Assurance Company Ltd. He joined Old Mutual in 2000 and was seconded to Old Mutual Zimbabwe, where he worked on a strategy project that led to re-structuring several functional areas within its Properties division.

Umar Banda CFO, City of Tshwane

Umar graduated from the University of Pretoria with a B.Com in Accounting in 2004. He then worked at KPMG for several years before moving to the Auditor-General’s office as an audit manager in 2012.

In 2014 he was appointed as the acting CFO of the City of Tshwane, and then permanently appointed to the post in 2017. Umar has earned an Executive Excellence and Leadership Programme focused in Leadership from Gordon Institute of Business Science.

This is also his third year in a row of being nominated for the CFO Awards. l

CFO AWARDS CATEGORIES 1. Finance & Technology Award 2. Moving into Africa Award 3. Finance Transformation Award 4. Compliance & Governance Award 5. High Performance Team Award 6. Transformation & Empowerment Award 7. Strategy Execution Award 8. Young CFO of the Year 2019 9. Public Sector CFO of the Year 2019 10. CFO of the Year 2019

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COMMUNITY

Adapt to change in 2019 It’s a cliché because it’s true: the only constant in the business world is change. And the pace of change is speeding up. A report published by Bell Technologies in 2017 stated that of 85 percent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.

Against this backdrop, how will you reinvent yourself to stay current and ahead of, or even at the top of, your game? That’s the question that you and your peers will explore and hopefully answer throughout the 2019 CFO event calendar, in line with the theme for the year: “Adapt or die”.

Of course, your focus is going to be on the first bit of that theme: ADAPT. At the same time, which dying business is able to diagnose itself?

Traditionally, your event calendar starts with the Get Smart Summit, which takes a look at how CFOs – and HR leaders – can stay relevant and adapt to change, and new information and knowledge. Top academics and business leaders take a shot at responding to this conundrum.

Adapting with agility is often a topic that comes up during interviews with CFO Awards nominees, as being successful in business almost always means weathering change. In the interviews with the eminent judging panel ahead of the Awards event on 8 May, nominated CFOs shared their journeys through tough times, and shown how they’ve emerged smarter, more insightful and more

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prepared for the inevitable next wave of change.

As you know, the CFO Awards is not all work and no play. Our guests at the event will also be treated to entertainment from comedian Nic Rabinowitz and the “Urban Astronomer” Cory Schmidt, who has a less trodden take on what it means to reach for the stars.

Last year, CFO Day was the most talked about event of the year, as CEOs took the stage and shared their candid – sometimes vulnerable – insights into success (and into what they expect of you and other CFOs). To build on its success, this year you’ll be able to join an even bigger and better version of this event. You can’t afford to miss it.

From speaking to CFOs during my incredible first year as CFO SA community manager, one thing has become clear to me. Your your goal is to keep up with changes in the financial and business landscape. Adapting is far preferable to becoming irrelevant, so invest in your personal and organisational development.

I look forward to meeting with many of you personally this year. And don’t hesitate to let me know how I can help you.

John Deane CFO South Africa community manager +27 82 570 9482 jdeane@cfo.co.za

The preferred community for SA’s finance executives

21 FEBRUARY 2019

CFO SA Summit: Get Smart – Johannesburg

12 MARCH 2019

CFO SA Summit 2 – Cape Town

8 MAY 2019

CFO Awards – Johannesburg

6 – 7 JUNE 2019

CFO SA Journey – Johannesburg

9 JULY 2019

CFO SA Dinner – Johannesburg

23 JULY 2019

CFO Day – Johannesburg

1 AUGUST 2019

CFO and CHRO SA Women’s Event – Johannesburg

16 – 17 OCTOBER 2019 Finance Indaba Africa – Sandton Convention Centre

7 NOVEMBER 2019

CFO SA Summit 3 – Johannesburg

Learn, network & build your career CFO.co.za | John Deane, CFO South Africa Community Manager jdeane@cfo.co.za | +27 82 570 9482