This archive report was first published on 5 August 2020.
August 5, 2020 - Safaricom, the largest telco in Kenya, has seen its outgoing chairman Nicholas Nganga sell 21 per cent of his shares in the company. According to the company's annual report for the year ended March 2020, Nganga sold 185,900 shares out of his 855,100 shares, valued at Sh4.9 million at the current pricing at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).
Nganga's sale is the latest by top Safaricom directors in the last two years. In 2018, Safaricom incoming board chairman Michael Joseph and Treasury's representative to the board Esther Koimett both sold their entire stock of 1.1 million and 517,600 shares respectively. Joseph sold his shares to raise money for constructing his retirement home.
Under Safaricom's by-laws, directors are allowed to trade in the company's shares in the open market as long as none holds more than one per cent of the company's equity. The company's outgoing chief financial officer (CFO) Sateesh Kamath last year doubled his shareholding from 160,000 shares to 310,000, placing him second to Nganga in the current hierarchy of directors' individual shareholding.
Nganga's retirement last week caps a series of changes at the board that has seen a new CFO, chief executive and board chairman named to the giant telco over the past one year. Safaricom is currently the most valuable company at the NSE with a Sh1.143 trillion market capitalisation that accounts for 62 per cent of the market.
