South Africa Ensures Continuity at Central Bank as Naidoo Stays

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa): South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has reappointed Kuben Naidoo as deputy governor of the central bank, ensuring continuity at the institution’s top management level for least another four years.
Naidoo will serve a further five years after his first term expires March 31, the central bank said in an emailed statement Wednesday. His reappointment follows that of Governor Lesetja Kganyago in July when Ramaphosa also named Fundi Tshazibana and Rashad Cassim as deputy governors. The Reserve Bank chief and three deputies are appointed by the leader of the country for a fixed five-year term.
This ensures continuity on the interest rate-setting monetary policy committee and at the Prudential Authority, that regulates the banking sector. Naidoo was also reappointed chief officer of the regulator. As head of the body, he was a key figure in probing the country’s biggest bank heist. VBS Mutual Bank collapsed in 2018, with five bankers accused of siphoning off at least 1.5 billion rand ($92 million) from the lender.
Naidoo joined the central bank as an adviser to former Governor Gill Marcus in 2013 and was appointed deputy governor two years later. He previously headed the National Planning Commission in the Presidency and the budget office at the National Treasury. He spent two years at the U.K. Treasury working on capital budgets and biannual spending review.
Naidoo holds a bachelor of science degree, a post-graduate diploma in public management from the University of the Witwatersrand and a master of business administration from the University of Birmingham. Naidoo wrote some of his final school exams in jail after he was arrested for organizing a student demonstration against white minority rule in South Africa in the late 1980s.

Source: Bloomberg Business News