MTN has appointed a former CFO at Luxemberg-based Millicom to it board of directors, adding to a growing list of international telecom and technology executives joining local boards.
Africa’s largest mobile operator announced the appointment of Tim Pennington as an independent nonexecutive director of MTN Group and MTN Holdings, effective from the start of August 2022.
Pennington, a graduate of the University of Manchester and also an associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, was the CFO of Millicom International Cellular from 2014 until March 2022.
Millicom, headquartered in Luxembourg, is a provider of fixed and mobile services in Latin America, and is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It operates through the Tigo brand with a range of services including mobile financial services, sports entertainment, pay TV, data, voice, and business-to-business solutions such as cloud and security.
Founded in 1990, four years before MTN's inception, Millicom has about 50-million customers, employing an estimated 20,000 people. The company is worth $1.73bn.
In April, Sharmistha Dubey, outgoing CEO of the world’s biggest online dating company, Match Group, joined the board of SA technology giant Naspers.
MTN said Pennington played “an instrumental role in Millicom’s transformation into a leading provider of fixed and mobile broadband services. Under his leadership as CFO, the company successfully accomplished several key projects including, Millicom’s exit from Africa, its Nasdaq listing in the US and the acquisition of various operations.”
The telecom veteran previously served as CFO in other international listed companies, such as Miami based Cable & Wireless Communications. He serves as a nonexecutive director on the board of London-listed Euromoney Institutional Investor.
The company expects Pennington to be appointed as a member of its finance and investment, risk and compliance committees, as well as the audit committee.
Pennington’s appointment comes a few months after the company made a raft of executive changes in December at group level.
Besides Godfrey Motsa’s departure as the head of MTN SA and his replacement with Charles Molapisi, the group changed its reporting structure, with its core connectivity business being streamlined into SA, Nigeria, and markets comprising West and Central Africa, South and East Africa (SEA) and the Middle East and North Africa.
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