The new chief executive of Alexander Forbes – Dawie de Villiers has given himself till March to come up with a new blueprint to rejuvenate the company after its profit from continuing operations plunged 115percent in the six months ended September on the back of a failed IT upgrade project.
The company swung from a profit of R324million in the comparative period to a loss of R45m in the period under review.
The firm said it wrote off R287m in impairment of capitalised software development assets and R52m one-off operating expenses relating to the termination of the IT contract.
The group’s headline earnings per share also plunged 23percent to 16.7cents per share.
According to De Villiers, the company had in the past few years abandoned its core business and wanted it to refocus on what it did best. “At its core, the company should be an advice-led business with superior advice services for corporates and individuals. We kind of drifted away from being an advisory business and if we set up the business that way we will surely succeed,” he said
“The business is also too complex. I committed to the board and clients that by March I will come with a plan that will inform our future strategy and simplify our business for the market to better understand what we are doing.”
De Villiers took over the group’s became CEO in November after the company’s former CEO Andrew Darfoor was unceremoniously fired in September.
The company said it had fired Darfoor due to a “loss of confidence and trust” in his leadership. The huge impairments over the failed IT upgrade has raised speculation that Darfoor was dismissed over the ill-fated programme.
Darfoor has since taken his dismissal to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration
-IOL
