EOH gets new board members

ICT services company EOH has appointed new board members.

In a statement this morning, the company announced the appointment of Dr Anushka Bogdanov, Andrew Mthembu and Michael Bosman as independent non-executive directors with immediate effect.

Earlier this month, the JSE-listed company appointed Dr Xolani Mkhwanazi as chairman.

Mkhwanazi’s appointment followed the resignation of Asher Bohbot, EOH founder, non-executive chairman and former CEO, in February.

“These appointments are another important milestone for the EOH Group as the skill and experience brought by our incoming directors will go a long way towards enhancing and complementing our leadership capability and governance oversight,” says Mkhwanazi. “Our board is now also compliant with the King Code of Corporate Governance.”

South African born, Bogdanov started her career with Absa Corporate and Merchant Bank in their risk function in 1993.

In 1999, she moved to Fitch Ratings as senior director: head of banking sector South Africa and Africa to join a team involved in rating South Africa’s banks.

In 2003, she joined Nedbank and during her time in the banking industry, she was instrumental in improving risk management capabilities, strengthening the use of business performance predictive models and building an impressive analytics team made up of black South African mathematicians.

Her most recent corporate role was at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) before establishing her own risk management consulting firm. Bogdanov also lectures to MPhil students and supervises PhD Finance students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Mthembu was born in Swaziland and started his career in the Ministry of Works and Communications as an engineer before joining the DBSA in project finance where he became the liaison between the DBSA, the South African government and the then Homelands.

He went on to work for Otis Elevators, a United Technologies company as a contracts manager and later as inland regional manager in their South African operations.

EOH says while at Otis, Mthembu spent two years in their North American operations in Toronto, Canada. He later moved on to become managing director of Murray & Roberts in their toll roads concession business, Tolcon.

While at Murray and Roberts, Mthembu worked with multinational teams on infrastructure projects both locally and internationally. He was subsequently appointed as MD of Vodacom SA where his time was characterised by massive growth driven by the introduction of the pre-paid product, widespread expansion of the technical infrastructure, and fast paced market development, says EOH.

At Vodacom, Mthembu was also charged with setting up their international operations as MD, culminating in the expansion of the company’s footprint to Mozambique, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as Lesotho.

He served as an advisor to the Minister of the Department of Public Enterprises in South Africa on ICT industry issues and during this tenure, and at the invitation of President Mbeki, he was appointed to lead the establishment of Broadband Infraco and successfully led the required parliamentary approvals and built the institution on the back of Transnet and Eskom fibre assets.

He now manages his investment company and consults to various clients on ICT strategies.

EOH adds that Bosman began his career in corporate and project finance before moving into the creative world of advertising.

As the youngest member of the Wilson Keller agency leadership, Bosman led a management buy-out. The new firm (Bosman Johnson) was later acquired by Lindsay Smithers FCB – of which Bosman became the CEO.

He was responsible for launching and growing the FCB network into 30 offices in 20 African cities and, together with his team, built FCB into SA’s largest advertising agency, doubling its billings to R1 billion.

The company says Bosman’s success captured the attention of the FCB North America office which offered him the role of president and chief operating officer, based in New York. This business had approximately 3 000 employees with 25 offices and billings of about 6 billion.

When his contract expired, he returned to South Africa and established his own consultancy and advised on several BEE transactions. He later served as Group CEO of the large communications group, TBWA\South Africa

Johann Rupert invited him to serve on the Venfin board which had investments in a variety of large companies such as Vodacom, Alexander Forbes, e.tv, Dimension Data and many others. Mike was on the board at the time of the disposal of Venfin’s stake in Vodacom to Vodafone.