The Board of Directors of the Botswana Telecommunication Corporation Limited (BTCL) has confirmed Anthony Masunga as the company’s substantive Managing Director. The appointment is effective 1st January 2017, six months after the departure of the former MD ÔÇô Paul Taylor.
The race for the BSE quoted telecommunications outfit reached a peak point when the runners for the top post emerged between Masunga and the BTCL’s General Manager of Strategy, Christopher Diswai. Diswai was previously Network Planning & Implementation Manager at Orange Botswana equipped with MBA, Business Administration from Henley Business School.
Before his appointment as acting MD, Masunga was deputising Taylor as Chief Operations Officer (COO) and he was previously General Manager Commercial, General Manager Privatization as well as General Manager BeMobile Botswana.
Masunga’s confirmation comes a month after BTCL Board of Directors elected Lorato Boakgomo-Ntakhwana the corporation Chairperson, who is tasked with addressing the challenges that the corporation is facing together with the rest of the board.
During the last BTCL AGM, Daphne Matlakala, who quit her position as group board chairperson, announced that the company will be in a position to announce the new MD in period of about three months. Matlakala added that the board has no intension to stay for a long time without substantive managing director. At the same time, Matlakala stated that she is leaving the BTCL board purely for “personal reasons” adding that she believes that the company will remain in good hands. Despite this assurance, her decision to quit pushed the BTCL share price even lower at the local bourse. She was later replaced with Lorato Boakgomo-Ntakhwana who was formerly Chief Executive Officer at First National Bank Botswana (FNBB).
Meanwhile Masunga takes the reins at BCTL at the time when shareholders have been expressing concern and displeasure about the unsatisfactory of the company’s share price trading at BSE.
BTCL, which reached the local bourse at an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of P1.00 per share started trading at P1.30 on its first day but later dropped to a low 84 Thebe per share in August this year. Since then the price have been steadily trading at 85 thebe from 11th August 2016 to 28th October 2016 which analysts say is not impressive performance in the eyes of shareholders and prospective investors.
