It has been in the air for some time now. Manoj Kohli, MD & CEO (International) of Bharti Airtels's African, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka operations will relocate to India starting January 1, 2014. He shall be replaced by Christian de Faria, who for the last seven years has held senior leadership positions in African mobile leader MTN including Executive Vice President, responsible for the operations for West and Central Africa Region and later as Group Commercial Officer for two years until January 2013.
As CEO of Airtel Africa, Christian will be responsible for providing overall leadership for the African operations and will be fully empowered to manage its P&L. He will lead the growth agenda across markets and build key skills and capabilities within the organization. He will also be co-opted on the Board of Bharti Airtel International Netherlands B.V. and on the boards of major operating companies in Africa. Christian has over 30 years of industry experience and has worked with MTN, Telekom Malaysia, Discvision, Deutsche Telecom and Grundig.
Manoj who has been in Africa now for over three years had the mandate to turn around the African operations. While Airtel Africa has seen annual revenues at $ 4.4 billion come close to the targeted $ 5 billion, the same cannot be said about EBITDA. During 2012-'13, EBITDA was $ 1.1 billion against the target of $ 2 billion.
It is still not clear what the new role for Kohli will be once returns to India. The Bharti Airtel media release states that Manoj would lead strategic issues such as in-market consolidation via M&A, key matters relating to towerco, global partnerships,global sourcing from key partners and strategic regulatory aspects. Additionally, Manoj will be responsible for the business development/M&A function for the telecom business and be involved with the group strategic matters. He will continue his position on the boards of Bharti Airtel International Netherlands B.V. and Airtel Networks Ltd, Nigeria.
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