Fomer Deloitte South Africa advisor Batandwa Mdyesha joins BAIC
Former Manager at Deloitte, Batandwa Mdyesha has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer at the Beijing Automotive Group (BAIC). Mdyesha will help lead the South African operations of the company (BAIC SA) from their head office in Johannesburg, with immediate effect.
BAIC is a Beijing-based Fortune-500 automotive company that runs as a state-owned enterprise. The firm runs massive operations in South Arica, having unveiled plans for an 11 billion Rand vehicle plant in the country last year, the biggest of its kind in four decades. The plant is being constructed with the objective of feeding the markets across the African continent and even Europe at a later date.
Now, in order to strengthen its operations in tandem with this project, the firm has appointed a new CFO for its South Africa outfit in the form of Batanda Mdyesha, a former Manager at Deloitte. Mdyesha joins immediately from the African Exploration Mining & Finance Corporation, where she spent a four-year spell as the General Manager for Finance.
Mdyesha qualified as a chartered accountant in 2008, having previously obtained a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from the University of Free State and a Postgraduate Finance Conversion Course from the University of Cape Town. She began her career at Deloitte, where she worked in the field of auditing for medium and large companies. Having begun at the Deloitte Cape Town office, she was seconded for four months to Deloitte’s Amsterdam office. At the time of leaving the Big four professional services firm, she had ascended to the position of Special Services Group Manager.
From Deloitte, Mdyesha moved to Eskom Holdings, where she worked for three years, also holding the position of Financial Reporting and Compliance Manager during her time at the firm. She has also intermittently held jobs at Freightdynamics, as well as auditing roles for South African state-owned enterprises.
BAIC will hope that this wealth of experience will help Mdyesha consolidate the firm's position in South Africa. Commenting on the appointment, BAIC International Vice-President Li Xiaofan said, “We look forward to welcoming Mdyesha to our South African operation, we wish her well in this senior leadership role, and look forward to her strategic and leadership contributions to make our South African and African operations successful.”
Meanwhile, Mdeysha expressed her admiration for BAIC, stating that “BAIC continues to impress at a global level through its influence, scale and capabilities. The company was recently listed in the Fortune Global 500 for the fifth consecutive year. The latest ranking fully reflects powerful growth momentum of BAIC, which will also be felt on the African continent, through export.”
Gender diversity
The appointment represents yet another promising step towards increasing gender diversity amongst the top ranks of South Africa’s financial world. A report from strategy consulting firm Bain & Company released earlier this year revealed that women in South Africa found it challenging to break into the top executive positions, despite being qualified capable, and willing to do so.
Since then, a number of positive developments have been noted in the financial sector of the country. In the last few months, BP South Africa has appointed three women to their top leadership ranks, including Priscillah Mabelane, who is the first ever black female CEO of the firm in South Africa. Moreover, reputation management consulting firm Vuma recently restructured its ownership in order to match the stipulations of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment act of South Africa.
