Saudi cellco Etihad Etisalat (TASI:7020), which trades as Mobily, has appointed a new CEO and CFO in the wake of accounting regularities exposed last year.
In a filing with the Tadawul stock exchange yesterday, the company announced that it has…
Saudi cellco Etihad Etisalat (TASI:7020), which trades as Mobily, has appointed a new CEO and CFO in the wake of accounting regularities exposed last year.
In a filing with the Tadawul stock exchange yesterday, the company announced that it has appointed Ahmad Farrouk as its new CEO. Last week Farrouk stepped down as CEO of MTN South Africa.
Mobily, the local subsidiary of UAE-headquartered Etisalat, described Farrouk as “an experienced professional in financial matters [with] a proven track record of success in the area of financial management, audit and operations.”
Etisalat Group announced yesterday in a separate statement that Kais Ben Hamida would become CFO. Hamida joins from Egyptian cellco Mobinil, where he had been CFO since 2011.
Prior to that, he held roles in M&A, project financing, business development and business monitoring at Orange Group. He has also worked in banking, at Societe Generale and at the World Bank, and in private equity.
In a 30 June stock exchange filing, the Saudi mobile operator announced that discussions undertaken in April with lenders “to obtain a reset of a certain financial covenant [in Q2]” were “still ongoing.”
The company said in a separate filing on that day that it planned to reissue the adjusted consolidated revenue statements for 2014 and Q1 2015 “before the end of the announcement period for publishing Q2 2015 results.”
It added that its external auditors were examining full-year 2013 and 2014 results, which would also be reissued.
Etisalat Group has said that these reissued statements would negatively impact group statements by some AED616m (US$167.7m), while Mobily’s increased provisions related to account receivables due from another operator would reduce the group’s consolidated net profit in 2015 by AED204m (US$55.5m).
