Former MTN South Africa CEO Zunaid Bulbulia has joined listed telecommunications provider Huge Group as an independent nonexecutive director with immediate effect.
Huge Group said on Friday that Bulbulia, who was most recently chief operations executive of the MTN group — he resigned at the end of last year — had taken on the role effective 28 January.
Bulbulia, a qualified chartered accountant, will serve as a member of Huge Group’s audit committee.
He was one of the founding members of the MTN group and has served a wide range of functions in MTN South Africa, including as financial manager and various GM positions, including GM of subscriber and service operations.
He was named chief financial officer of MTN South Africa in 2005 and became CEO in May 2013. In August 2014, he was moved into a group operations role.
In a statement, Huge Group nonexecutive chairman Vincent Mokholo said Bulbulia will bring enormous value to the company.
“Not only is he an experienced executive who understands the business priorities and challenges of a mobile network operator, but Zunaid also has a deep understanding of service provider business models, and more importantly, how Huge Telecom’s business model can coexist in the bigger mobile operator business model,” Mokholo said.
The appointment comes despite a long-running dispute between Huge Group and MTN, which was settled in September 2014 when the former agreed to cough up R10m to end legal action brought by the latter.
Huge Group was last seen trading unchanged at R4,10/share. The counter has nearly doubled in the past 12 months. — (c) 2016 NewsCentral Media