Celtel Kenya CEO Resigns

The CEO of Celtel Kenya, David Murray has unexpectedly announced his resignation - after just one year at the helm of the company. The company's CFO, Caba Pinter will take over the post on a temporary basis until a permanent replacement is found.

No reason was given - other than he has "opted to retire and pursue personal interests". He had technically reached the age of retirement in the company, but that is rarely applied to company directors, and the firm would almost certainly not have employed him as CEO last year had his imminent retirement been mandatory.

Prior to joining Celtel Kenya, Mr Murray was Chief Operating Officer of Qatar Telecom.

Celtel Kenya recently said that it has lost as much as US$3 million to the post-election violence that has shaken the country in the past few weeks. The figure did not include repairs to the network infrastructure, which has still not been calculated.

Celtel is Kenya's second largest operator. According to figures from the Mobile World, the company ended September with just over 2.7 million customers and a market share of 23%.

Posted to the site on 16th January 2008