(Bloomberg) -- Africa’s richest woman failed for now to secure a fresh mandate as chairwoman of Angola’s biggest telecommunications company, but managed to keep her seat on the board after a shareholder meeting on Tuesday to discuss corporate governance in the wake of legal action by one of the firm’s biggest investors.
The meeting at Unitel SA, in which Isabel dos Santos owns 25 percent stake, comes after an arbitration court ruled that Brazilian telecommunications company Oi SA was entitled to receive $654 million from other Unitel shareholders because they violated several clauses of the company’s shareholders’ agreement and failed to pay dividends to Oi.
Shareholders with as much as 75 percent of Unitel were expected to vote for the removal of dos Santos, Antonio Estote, an independent economist and professor at the Universidade Lusiada de Angola said before the meeting. Besides Oi, the shareholders are state oil company Sonangol and army general Leopoldino do Nascimento, who each hold 25 percent, according to Estote.
Unitel shareholders unanimously elected Isabel dos Santos and four other members to the board of the company. Miguel Geraldes, a former senior consultant at Huawei Technologies in South Africa, will replace Antony Dolton as general director of Unitel. The new board will take office on May 6 and elect a new chairperson, according to Unitel.
The daughter of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Isabel amassed a fortune during her father’s almost four-decade rule and has an estimated net worth of about $2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Besides Unitel, her business interests include media, retail, finance and energy, both in Angola and in Portugal.
Joao Lourenco, who replaced dos Santos in 2017, has made the battle against graft the cornerstone of his administration, dismantling the influence of his predecessor’s family over key sectors.
Sonangol has repeatedly said it wants a new board at Unitel, while Oi has publicly expressed its disapproval with management for withholding millions of dollars in dividend payments. Unitel didn’t say whether Isabel dos Santos could still be reappointed as chairwoman after the new board takes office on May 6.
“We can’t accept that a single shareholder with 25 percent stake can take unilateral decisions at the company, Sonangol Chairman Carlos Saturnino told reporters on Feb. 25. “We need to reach an agreement to appoint a new board.”
(Adds result of shareholder meeting in lead and third paragraph.)
