Naspers has announced that its CEO, Koos Bekker, will be succeeded by Bob van Dijk, currently Naspers’s most senior ecommerce chief.
Bob holds an MSc Econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam (cum laude), plus an MBA from Insead in France (Dean’s List). Among other experience, he headed up eBay Germany, that group’s biggest market outside the US, and was COO of Schibsted’s Classifieds.
Currently living in the Netherlands, Bob will take over as CEO April 1.
“In view of our strong development focus on ecommerce, the board believes that Bob has the skills to lead us into the next phase of our growth,” said Ton Vosloo, Naspers chair.
Koos (61) will stand down from the Naspers board for a year, to allow Bob the space to settle in with both Naspers top management and the board. Koos intends to travel widely and research where the group’s next spurt of growth may come from, once ecommerce has reached maturity. He will also stay on the Tencent board. In April 2015, Ton Vosloo intends to step down as chair, when Koos will succeed him.
Koos has been at the forefront of Nasper’s growth from its roots in with M-Net in 1985 as a pay tv distributor in South Africa to the largest media group outside the US and China, larger than any in Europe with a $45 billion market capitalisation.
“We are also proud of the resonance our growth has in the South African economy, via the thousands of people we employ directly and the tens of thousands in the broader ecosystems of our businesses. We particularly enjoyed the new products and services our people invented,” said Ton Vosloo.
Koos expressed his gratitude to his Naspers colleagues and board members for the opportunity to work with them. “It’s been fun,” he said. “I couldn’t have wished for a more interesting life. Now I hope to travel to places like Seoul and San Francisco where the future is being manufactured, and see if there are new technologies we should be trying out. Plus experience a few oddball spots. When Ton steps down, I’ll rejoin the board, hopefully with fresh ideas.”
