Safaricom Ltd., Kenya’s biggest company by market value, appointed Govinda Sateeth Kamath as chief financial officer from August, replacing John Tombleson.
Kamath was previously CFO at the Tanzanian unit of Vodacom Group Ltd., the Johannesburg-based mobile-phone company. Tombleson will head to his home country, New Zealand, as integration director at the recently merged Vodafone Group Plc unit and Sky Network of New Zealand.
Safaricom shares were down 1.4 percent at 17.50 shillings at 12:00 p.m. in the capital, Nairobi. Volumes surged to more than twice their three-month average.
Safaricom, which is 40 percent owned by Newbury, England-based Vodafone, said last month Tombleson’s departure was part of a routine rotation of employees seconded to Safaricom by Vodafone.
Tombleson was one of five Safaricom executive named in a draft forensic-audit report leaked to the Nairobi-based Daily Nation newspaper in May over the alleged non-procedural purchase of a 1.15 billion-shilling ($11.4 million), five-acre piece of land in the capital. Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said there was “absolutely no evidence that any of the individuals or organizations named benefited inappropriately from any of Safaricom’s commercial agreements.”
