MTN is hiring the head of Absa’s Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB) as its vice-president of strategy and mergers & acquisitions. Stephen van Coller will join the telecommunications group on 1 October 2016.

Van Coller will be the fourth vice-president of the group, the other three having responsibility for the geographic operating regions of MTN. It will appoint a deputy head of mergers and acquisitions shortly, it said.

In Van Coller, MTN is getting someone with extensive experience in the financial services sector. He worked for 10 years at Deutsche Bank from 1996 as an MD of investment banking, an executive committee member and foundation trustee for the bank in South Africa.

The last 10 years were at Barclays Africa Group where he has held the positions of head of primary markets at Absa Capital and more recently CEO of CIB, overseeing more than R250bn in assets across 13 African countries.

It’s the second top executive with extensive experience in the financial services sector that MTN has hired. Last month, it announced that its new CEO from mid-2017 would be Rob Shuter, who held top positions at both Standard Bank and Nedbank before joining Vodacom and later Vodafone.

“MTN will continue its efforts to develop participation in the enterprise sector and adjacent sectors such as financial services and media & entertainment,” the group told shareholders on Monday morning.

“As the head of strategy and mergers & acquisitions, we are confident that Stephen’s experience will be instrumental in helping the group realise its ambitions and commitments.” — (c) 2016 NewsCentral Media