Tito Mboweni, South Africa's finance minister, gave the continent's biggest fund manager more independence by breaking with tradition and not appointing his deputy to chair the custodian of the pensions of the country's government workers.
The chair of the board of the Public Investment Corp. will be chosen from a list of appointees, that include union representatives for the first time, at its initial meeting after it takes office July 12. The board is an interim arrangement, appointed for a year, as a judicial commission of inquiry into its governance is set to make findings this month.
The PIC's new board has its work cut out for it. That's as the South African manager of more than 2 trillion rand ($142 billion) faces the inquiry, is running several internal probes on key employees and has its third chief executive officer in six months.
The previous board of directors offered to resign in early February saying the PIC had entered a "state of paralysis" following misconduct claims against some board members but offered to stay on until a new board was appointed.
That state of limbo will now be alleviated as the new board includes Sindi Mabaso-Koyana, Irene Charnley, Maria Ramos, Barbara Watson and Reuel Khoza, according to an emailed statement Wednesday from National Treasury. Ramos is a former director general of the National Treasury and CEO of Absa Group Ltd., one of South Africa's four biggest banks.
At the time the previous board resigned, the PIC started a forensic investigation into allegations of wrongdoing made by an anonymous whistleblower against three board members. In the past year, half of the PIC's executive committee have been suspended or resigned.
In January, a former board member told the commission of inquiry that the money manager would be better off without the deputy finance minister in the role because it inadvertently exposes the continent's biggest money manager to the perception of political interference.
The break from the practice of appointing the deputy finance minister as the PIC chairman is probably an attempt to dismantle opportunities for corruption, according to Ralph Mathekga, an analyst and author of books on South African politics.
"When you impose a chairperson of the board it disrupts the normal chain of accountability," Mr. Mathekga said Wednesday by phone."Empowering the board to choose its own chairperson is more to indicate to them that they will be in the hot seat if things go wrong."
