Zimre Holdings Limited (ZHL) chief executive Albert Nduna is retiring from the financial services group at the end of the year after 31 years at the helm.
BY NDAMU SANDU
ZHL board chairman Ben Khumalo confirmed the pending departure of Nduna.
“Mr Nduna is retiring at the end of the year (December 31, 2015) after reaching the age of retirement in June of this year. We have engaged Highpost Consultants to obtain curriculum vitaes of potential candidates for the position of group chief executive officer of ZHL,” Khumalo said.
Formerly Zimre Corporation, ZHL was formed by an Act of Parliament in 1983 and started transacting reinsurance business a year later with Nduna as managing director-designate.
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The group has known no other head since then.
To his credit, Nduna has steered the ship resulting in the listing of the company on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) in 1999, thereby broadening its shareholders’ base.
Nduna led the unbundling of the group into strategic business units to increase shareholder value. The unbundling saw Nicoz Diamond listing on the ZSE in October 2002. Fidelity Life was to join the bourse a year later. Nicoz and Fidelity were acquired in 1988.
Early this year, a consortium led by Simon and Hamish Rudland emerged with 40,16% shareholding after underwriting ZHL’s $15 million rights issue. Government and the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) did not follow their rights. As at June 30, government and NSSA now had 21,67% and 13,32% respectively in ZHL.
The entry of the Rudlands into the financial services group is being challenged by the Affirmative Action Group (AAG) which has besieged government to reverse the transaction.
“We cannot afford to wean our best assets and leave the best of our local management assets to fall afoul of the unchecked and sharpened appetites of the economic pirates of yesteryear dressed in black faces,” AAG vice-president Sam Ncube wrote in a letter to Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda.
The letter was dated October 1, 2015.
“If left unrestrained, the Zimre Holdings takeover is a harbinger of worse machinations to come from those who seek to wrench our critical national assets for a song amidst the same withering fundamental economic pressures they are broadly in support of.”
In the six months to June 30, ZHL recorded a loss after tax of $0,11 million compared to a profit of $2,39 million in the same period the previous year.