Daniel Mminele has resigned as chair and independent non-executive director of financial services group Alexforbes to take up the same roles at Nedbank.
The former Absa CEO, who also served two five-year terms as deputy governor of the SA Reserve Bank, will join Nedbank on May 1 and immediately assume the role of independent non-executive director.
Mminele will then be elected as chair at the conclusion of Nedbank’s AGM, which is scheduled for June 2, the banking group said in a statement on Wednesday.
“What drew me to Nedbank ... is obviously that this is a bank with strong values and purpose-driven approach. It also plays an inspiring, pioneering leadership role in sustainability,” Mminele told Business Day.
“Nedbank has very established green credentials, which allowed me to continue in the theme of work I was recently involved in and which has become very important to me.”
Mminele, who is 57 years old and holds British and SA passports, recently stepped down as head of the presidential climate finance task team after his contract expired at the end of December 2022.
He was appointed to the role in February 2022, which tasked him with kick-starting SA’s transition from fossil fuels to greener alternatives.
A key part of that role was detailing SA’s planned investment of a $8.5bn financing package announced as part of the country’s Just Energy Transition Partnership with France, Germany, the UK, the US and the EU. The partnership was announced at COP26 in 2021 and led to the launch of the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan at COP27 a year later.
“I had a short-term contract [with the task team], which really had as its objective to get the so-called just energy partnership off the ground,” Mminele said. “When its expiration started approaching I started looking around and entertaining approaches that came to me.
“There was one other opportunity that I considered ... weighed them up very carefully ... decided on Nedbank ... and of course from a governance perspective I had to then step back from my roles at Alexforbes.”
Mminele joined the retirement funds administrator on January 1 2022. Alexforbes said in a statement regarding Mminele’s resignation that director Thabo Dloti would step in as interim chair from May 1.
“I had a good run at Alexforbes, a very impressive organisation that [is on] a very exciting journey,” he said.
Mminele’s appointment by Alexforbes, which was announced in December 2021, came just eight months after he quit as Absa CEO in April that year due to differences with the board over the bank’s strategy. As the first black executive to lead Absa, a position he occupied for less than 16 months, Mminele’s departure sparked strong criticism from the Public Investment Corporation and the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals over the bank’s allegedly slow pace of transformation.
About a year after Mminele’s departure, former chair Wendy Lucas-Bull told Business Day that one of the sticking points between him and the board was his preference for more centralised oversight.
That was despite the board having committed to a more decentralised approach in the wake of its three-year separation from Barclays.
Mminele sees his move to Nedbank as “a great opportunity” to return to the banking sector and to make a “meaningful contribution” both to the lender and society.
“It’s a large, systemically important banking group, which through its wide product range and services ... is well positioned to play an exciting role in society by supporting growth and development,” he said.
Update: February 15 2023
This story contains additional information throughout
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