South Africa’s Infrastructure challenges, low growth and corruption weigh heavily on Nedbank’s CFO.
On Africa:
We saw very good growth out of our 21% stake in Ecobank. Our expectations is that is likely to continue, albeit possibly slightly softer from an earnings perspective.
On South Africa:
There’s no doubt you’ll see stagnant growth as we build up towards the elections just as a result of everyone’s focus being on the elections rather than growing the economy. So I think that is unfortunate in an election year.
On changing leadership:
Jason Quinn joins us on the 22nd of May and is officially appointed as CEO at the AGM at which time Mike Brown will step down. I think that Jason will be a great fit for the organisation, he will inherit a business that’s got strong momentum underneath it. And I think working with exco and the board will take them from strength to strength.
Key challenges?
The Structural issues in SA, low GDP growth, high levels of unemployment . From an infrastructure perspective the logistics and energy constraints are top of mind and if you put corruption on top of that you have a very challenging environment. So unless we get a handle on those three issues, I think most businesses in South Africa, will underperform in terms of the potential that we offer.