Board of Directors

Date of first appointment
November 2015

Qualifications
BSc in Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology (UK) and MBA (INSEAD – France)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since November 2015 and Chairperson as from September 2016. Didier is the Chairperson of the Remuneration, Corporate Governance, Ethics & Sustainability Committee, Strategy Committee and Supervisory & Monitoring Committee and is a member of the Risk Monitoring Committee.

Skills and Experience
Didier has a track record of over forty years in the downstream sector of the oil industry, having worked for the EXXON and TOTAL Groups. He started his career with Esso in Mauritius in 1974 and was appointed as Managing Director of Esso Réunion in 1982. He was then transferred to the Esso Europe- Africa Services Headquarters in London to head the Supply & International Sales Division from 1985 to 1988. He joined the TOTAL Group in 1988 where he was entrusted several international assignments, initially as Managing Director of TOTAL in Zambia and in Zimbabwe and subsequently, as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of major TOTAL Refining & Marketing subsidiaries in South Africa and in the United Kingdom. He also shouldered an array of senior executive positions in the marketing and logistics arena at TOTAL’s Africa and Middle East Head Office in Paris and within TOTAL France, the home-based marketing and distribution company of the group. He was seconded in 2012 by TOTAL S.A as Chairperson and CEO of Société Anonyme de Gestion des Stocks Stratégiques, the national oil compulsory stock obligation entity for France.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
Terra Mauricia Ltd

Date of first appointment
November 2015

Qualifications
BSc (Honours) in Actuarial Science and Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since November 2015. Karuna is a member of the Audit Committee and Remuneration, Corporate Governance, Ethics & Sustainability Committee.

Skills and Experience
Karuna started her career at the M&G Reinsurance Company in London (now Swiss Re) in 1985. She joined the State Insurance Company of Mauritius Ltd (SICOM) as Actuary and Manager of the Life, Pensions and Actuarial departments in 1990 when she was also appointed Actuarial Advisor to the National Pensions Fund and member of its Investment Committee. She has been the Chief Executive of the SICOM Group from 1996 to 2017 and is currently the Chairperson thereof. She is also a Board member of several companies within the SICOM Group, acting either as chairperson or director. In the past, she has served as Director on the board of several companies, including State Bank of Mauritius Ltd, National Mutual Fund Ltd, First Republic Fund Ltd, Cyber Properties Investment Ltd, Mauritius Housing Company Ltd, National Housing Development Company Ltd, China Index Fund Ltd and China Actis Ltd. She was also a Founding Member of the National Committee on Corporate Governance and of the Board of Investment. She is currently a Director of MCB Equity Fund Ltd, a subsidiary of MCB Group Ltd.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
November 2019

Qualifications
LLB, MSc in Economics and Chartered Management Accountant (UK)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since November 2019. Constantine is a member of the Strategy Committee.

Skills and Experience
In a career spanning over 19 years with the World Bank Group, Constantine has held various operational, strategy and management roles, delivering development solutions for the bank’s client countries through analytical work and high level policy dialogue with governments while advising the board on internal corporate strategy and forward-looking initiatives. He oversaw a threefold growth of the World Bank’s investment portfolio in South East Asia and a forty percent improvement in its performance as Chairperson of committees that shaped the bank’s operational strategy and investment portfolios in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. Constantine led the opening of the World Bank Office in Mauritius where he assisted the Government in developing policy responses to the 2008 global financial crisis and streamlining the country’s business regulation to reduce the cost of regulatory compliance. Prior to joining the World Bank, Constantine worked as Business Development Executive for a global mining company and as Company Secretary for a conglomerate listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
December 2020

Qualifications
‘Diplôme d’Études Supérieures en Droit’ and ‘Diplôme de l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris’ (France)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since December 2020. Jean-Philippe is Chairperson of the Risk Monitoring Committee.

Skills and Experience
During his career, Jean-Philippe has accumulated extensive experience in the banking sector, having worked for the Société Générale Group for some 40 years. Over this period, he has assumed a range of high-level responsibilities within the group, acting as Director, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer in its various offices based worldwide. Before his retirement from Société Générale in early 2013, he was the Vice Chairperson and Managing Director of the National Société Générale Bank in Cairo, Egypt. He was a Board member of MCB Ltd from 2012 to 2018 and was appointed Chairperson thereof for the last 4 years. He is currently a Board member in several companies within the Group namely MCB Factors Ltd, MCB Microfinance Ltd and Fincorp Investment Ltd.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
Promotion and Development Ltd (Chairperson); Caudan Development Ltd (Chairperson); Constance Hotel Services Ltd; Fincorp Investment Ltd

Date of first appointment
December 2020

Qualifications
MA in Mathematics and Statistics (Scotland)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since December 2020. Stephen is a member of the Audit Committee and Remuneration, Corporate Governance, Ethics & Sustainability Committee.

Skills and Experience
Stephen pursued an executive career in investment banking and in the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector in the UK and in the USA. He held investment banking roles in Rothschild, Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan) and WestLB Panmure, a British corporate and institutional investment bank. He was the Chief Financial Officer before being appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Telewest plc, a cable & broadband internet, telephone carrier & cable television provider, listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). He has had an extensive and rich non-executive career over the last 20 years, sitting on 14 Boards, of which 11 were listed companies, including 2 FTSE 100 listed companies and he held multiple chairmanships of nomination and remuneration, audit and corporate governance committees thereon. He is currently the Chairperson of PRS for Music Ltd, a British music copyright collective, undertaking collective rights management for musical works, while being a director of Datatec Ltd (listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange) and Actual Experience plc (quoted on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the LSE). He has been appointed recently as Chairperson of Calnex Solutions plc, a UK-based company, which designs, produces and markets test and measurement instrumentation and solutions for the telecoms and cloud computing industries.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
Jun 2023

Qualifications
PhD in Applied Security (USA)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since June 2023. Cedric is a member of the Strategy Committee.

Skills and Experience
Dr Jeannot is the co-founder and CEO of Be Mobile Africa, a neobank which focuses on the unbanked and underbanked in Africa. The company covers over 30 markets and 22 currencies. It is known for operating one of the largest blockchain-based payment systems as well as having one of the most competitive savings accounts. Be Mobile Africa became a Harvard Business School Case Study and its story is also taught to the MBA class at MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also the co-founder of Be Financial Group, a Hong Kong based investment holding firm focused on emerging markets, and a Growth Coach at one of Canada’s largest tech incubators, Communitech, where he mentors start-up founders. Prior to founding Be Financial Group, he was the co-founder and CEO of APrivacy, an award-winning FinTech digital security company, which provided encryption and privacy software to the banking industry. The company's revolutionary technology enabled banks to use consumer apps like Dropbox, WhatsApp and WeChat for banking purposes, while having all the security and compliance required by the financial industry. He was named as one of 16 Most Promising Entrepreneurs in Asia-Pacific by Ernst and Young (EY) and served as a Canadian delegate to the G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit for several years. Moreover, he is a frequent speaker at digital conferences worldwide covering topics such as FinTech, Trade, Digital security, Crypto, Impact investing and Poverty alleviation and has been quoted in a number of global press publications.

Date of first appointment
November 2018

Qualifications
BSc (Honours) in Accounting and Financial Analysis and Chartered Accountant (UK)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since November 2018. Michael is a member of the Strategy Committee

Skills and Experience
Michael has a long experience in the retail industry. He currently heads the Lising Group and occupies the position of Managing Director. Prior to joining the Lising Group, Michael has worked for Ernst & Young (UK) and De Chazal Du Mée & Co. (Mauritius) where he was responsible for various consultancy projects and conducted assignments for the World Bank in Rwanda, Tanzania, Madagascar and Burkina Faso. He previously sat on the Council of the University of Mauritius and was a member of the Executive Committee of Young Presidents Organisation. He is also a Director of MCB Factors Ltd, a subsidiary of MCB Group Ltd.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
November 2023

Qualifications
BA Fine Arts (University of Mumbai), BCom (University of KwaZulu-Natal), MBL (cum laude) (University of South Africa)

Responsibilities
Non-executive director since Nov 2023

Skills and Experience
Maya is a seasoned non-executive director, serving on the boards of public and private companies as well as non-profit organisations. She currently chairs the board of Datatec Limited, and is a director on the boards of Mpact Limited, Ellies Holdings Limited, Cell C Limited, the AIG South Africa Group and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. In her executive career, Maya has held leadership positions in the telecommunications, financial services, consulting and fast-moving consumer goods industries. She has held directorships in human resources, marketing communication, corporate affairs and reputation management, strategy, and business re-engineering and has extensive experience in Southern African Development Community (“SADC”) countries, as well as in some markets in Asia. She was previously an executive director of Vodacom (Pty) Ltd, Nestlé South Africa (Pty) Ltd and SABMiller (Africa and Asia), Chair of the Vodacom Foundation South Africa and a board member of World Wide Fund for Nature.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
November 2016

Qualifications
BSc (Honours) in Mathematics and Chartered Accountant (UK)

Responsibilities
Executive Director as from September 2021 after having been a Non-Executive Director since November 2016. Jean Michel is a member and the Secretary of the Risk Monitoring Committee and Supervisory & Monitoring Committee. He is also a member of the Group’s Corporate Sustainability Committee (a subcommittee of the Remuneration, Corporate Governance, Ethics and Sustainability Committee).

Skills and Experience
Jean Michel joined MCB Ltd in January 2004 and was Head of Corporate Banking of the Bank until July 2015, when he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of MCB Investment Holding Ltd. He trained as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen in London before becoming Partner and Head of the Audit and Business Advisory Department of De Chazal Du Mée and subsequently of Ernst & Young in Mauritius. He is currently a Board member of several companies within the Group namely MCB Investment Holding Ltd, MCB Ltd, MCB Seychelles, MCB Maldives, MCB Madagascar, Banque Française Commerciale Océan Indien and MCB Leasing Ltd, amongst others. Moreover, he sits on the Risk Monitoring Committee of MCB Ltd.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
November 2022

Qualifications
Fellow Chartered Accountant (UK) and honorary ‘Commissaire aux comptes’ (France)

Responsibilities
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Skills and Experience
Jay worked for several years in London before joining KPMG France in 1983 where he has assumed a wide-range of high-level responsibilities. Amongst others, he founded and headed the Transaction Services and Consulting for ten years and was thereafter promoted Chief Operating Officer and appointed as a member of KPMG Europe/Middle-East and Africa in 2005. He was elected Chief Executive Officer of KPMG France and Board member of KPMG’s Global Board in 2013. During his stint at KPMG and until 2021, he served a global client base in France, Europe, Africa and the Americas. He is currently engaged in advisory services including the management of ESG and sustainability issues, and assist chief executives of selected medium sized companies including family business and scale up enterprises in taking strategic decisions and help board members to resolve governance issues. Jay graduated from the London School of Economics and attended an international Executive program at the Wharton School. He is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and a qualified French accountant.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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Date of first appointment
November 2018

Qualifications
BSc in Economics and Statistics (South Africa), BSc (Honours) Operation Research (South Africa), LLM International Business Law (France) and Fellow of the Institute of Faculty of Actuaries (UK)

Responsibilities
Non-Executive Director since November 2018. San is Chairperson of the Audit Committee.

Skills and Experience
San is a qualified actuary with over 23 years of experience across the sub-Saharan Africa region, the UK and the Netherlands. Her experience spans an array of disciplines in the insurance fields with particular interest in developing markets. She has worked for various regional and international companies including Old Mutual (Cape Town), and PwC (London and Amsterdam). She currently heads the Aon Global Benefits Africa Unit. She is the Chairperson of Anglo African Investments Ltd and is a director on Happy World Property Ltd.

Directorship(s) in other listed companies
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